Digital Preservation, Archival Science and Methodological Foundations for Digital Libraries

Digital libraries, whether commercial, public or personal, lie at the heart of the information society. Yet, research into their long‐term viability and the meaningful accessibility of their contents remains in its infancy. In general, as we have pointed out elsewhere, ‘after more than twenty years of research in digital curation and preservation the actual theories, methods and technologies that can either foster or ensure digital longevity remain startlingly limited.’ Research led by DigitalPreservationEurope (DPE) and the Digital Preservation Cluster of DELOS has allowed us to refine the key research challenges – theoretical, methodological and technological – that need attention by researchers in digital libraries during the coming five to ten years, if we are to ensure that the materials held in our emerging digital libraries are to remain sustainable, authentic, accessible and understandable over time. Building on this work and taking the theoretical framework of archival science as bedrock, this paper investigates digital preservation and its foundational role if digital libraries are to have long‐term viability at the centre of the global information society.

DCC Methodology for Designing and Evaluating Curation and Preservation Experiments V1.1

The purpose of this document is to describe a Digital Curation Centre (DCC) testbed methodology which will serve as a workflow framework for designing experiments to validate the effectiveness of curation and preservation strategies . The methodology is grounded in the following general principles: the methodology must conform to the fundamental standards of a scientific methodology,be easy to follow and implement, i.e. accommodate experimenters of all levels of technical expertise, be general enough to accommodate future changes and the evolution of ideas in curation and preservation theory and practice, be specific enough to provide concrete guidance in the immediate short term, be sufficiently flexible and extensibl

Studying Conceptual Models for Publishing Library Data to the Semantic Web

This thesis studies the library data and the way that linked data technologies may affect libraries. The thesis aims to contribute to the research regarding the devel-opment and implementation of a framework for the integration of bibliographic data in the semantic web. It seeks to make sound propositions for the interopera-bility of conceptual bibliographic models, as well as for future library systems and search environments integrating bibliographic information

Automatic evaluation of migration quality in distributed networks of converters

Migration has always played an important role in digital preservation. The most recent developments in this context introduce networks of remotely distributed converters. In this paper we propose an extension to current migration networks to enable users to: a) determine to what extent have the essential characteristics of digital objects been preserved during a migration; b) generate detailed migration reports for inclusion in the objects’ preservation metadata; and c) provide advice on the available migration paths or target formats that will best suit users’ requirements.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Artistic concerns in preservation: how to preserve a digitally-born artwork

The rise of new technologies in the twenty-first century is accompanied by challenges in arts preservation that underscore the need to constantly adapt to new ways of approaching preservation issues. This article investigates the problems in preserving digitally-born cultural heritage and explores the connections between digital cultural heritage and preservation of digitally-born artwork. At the core of this study is the question of how to deal with and preserve digital cultural heritage in the changing world of technology, following a case study model with an emphasis on practical research. The results suggest that while the importance of preventing damage is crucial, further investigations are needed in order to fully treat issues concerning the accurate representation of the artist's intention.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Tout cela est bien quelque chose: Digital Preservation Today: how European Commission programmes and policy have brought us here: Festschrift for Patricia (Pat) Manson

Patricia (Pat) Manson worked with the European Commission's (EC’s) research programmes from the early 1990s, initially as project officer (December 1991-March 2003) and then as Head of Unit (April 2003-2011) for Cultural Heritage and Technology Enhanced Learning which was part of the Directorate General Information Society and Media. The unit focused primarily on research in digital libraries, digital preservation, and in the use of ICTs for improving learning, but was also involved in the development of the i2010 digital libraries policies and actions. Prior to joining the Commission, she worked in the UK providing a national advisory and market watch service to libraries on the use of new technologies. She is now Head of the Inclusion, Skills & Youth Unit of the EC’s Directorate General for Communication Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT), where the unit’s goal is to ensure that citizens, especially youth and those at risk of exclusion, are best able to benefit from the Internet and have the necessary skills so to do. This article sets out Pat’s leadership of EC-funded Digital Preservation, and examines her legacy in terms of lasting best practices, contributions to standardisation activities etc

BlogForever: D3.1 Preservation Strategy Report

This report describes preservation planning approaches and strategies recommended by the BlogForever project as a core component of a weblog repository design. More specifically, we start by discussing why we would want to preserve weblogs in the first place and what it is exactly that we are trying to preserve. We further present a review of past and present work and highlight why current practices in web archiving do not address the needs of weblog preservation adequately. We make three distinctive contributions in this volume: a) we propose transferable practical workflows for applying a combination of established metadata and repository standards in developing a weblog repository, b) we provide an automated approach to identifying significant properties of weblog content that uses the notion of communities and how this affects previous strategies, c) we propose a sustainability plan that draws upon community knowledge through innovative repository design

Self-organizing distributed digital library supporting audio-video

The StreamOnTheFly network combines peer-to-peer networking and open-archive principles for community radio channels and TV stations in Europe. StreamOnTheFly demonstrates new methods of archive management and personalization technologies for both audio and video. It also provides a collaboration platform for community purposes that suits the flexible activity patterns of these kinds of broadcaster communities

Technology responsiveness for digital preservation: a model

Digital preservation may be defined as the cumulative actions undertaken by an organisation or individual to ensure that digital content is usable across generations of information technology. As technological change occurs, the digital preservation community must detect relevant technology developments, determine their implications for preserving digital content, and develop timely and appropriate responses to take full advantage of progress and minimize obsolescence. This thesis discusses the results of an investigation of technology responsiveness for digital preservation. The research produced a technology response model that defines the roles, functions, and content component for technology responsiveness. The model built on the results of an exploration of the nature and meaning of technological change and an evaluation of existing technology responses that might be adapted for digital preservation. The development of the model followed the six-step process defined by constructive research methodology, an approach that is most commonly used in information technology research and that is extensible to digital preservation research. This thesis defines the term technology responsiveness as the ability to develop continually effective responses to ongoing technological change through iterative monitoring, assessment, and response using the technology response model for digital preservation