Audit and Certification of Digital Repositories: Creating a Mandate for the Digital Curation Centre (DCC)

The article examines the issues surrounding the audit and certification of digital repositories in light of the work that the RLG/NARA Task Force did to draw up guidelines and the need for these guidelines to be validated.

The Role of Evidence in Establishing Trust in Repositories

This article arises from work by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) Working Group examining mechanisms to roll out audit and certification services for digital repositories in the United Kingdom. Our attempt to develop a program for applying audit and certification processes and tools took as its starting point the RLG-NARA Audit Checklist for Certifying Digital Repositories. Our intention was to appraise critically the checklist and conceive a means of applying its mechanics within a diverse range of repository environments. We were struck by the realization that while a great deal of effort has been invested in determining the characteristics of a 'trusted digital repository', far less effort has concentrated on the ways in which the presence of the attributes can be demonstrated and their qualities measured. With this in mind we sought to explore the role of evidence within the certification process, and to identify examples of the types of evidence (e.g., documentary, observational, and testimonial) that might be desirable during the course of a repository audit.

The Summer Employment Experiences and the Personal/ Social Behaviors of Youth Violence Prevention Employment Program Participants and Those of a Comparison Group

The summer job market for teens in both Massachusetts and the U.S. over the past five years has been quite depressed, with record low summer employment rates for the nation's teens being set in the past three years (2010-2012).1 The teen summer employment rate in Massachusetts fell from 67% in 1999 to only 36% in 2012, a decline of 31 percentage points (Chart 1). Black and Hispanic teens, especially those residing in low income families and from high poverty neighborhoods, have experienced the greatest difficulties in finding employment in the summer. Lack of job opportunities reduces teens' exposure to the world of work and their ability to acquire both basic employability skills (attendance, team work, communicating with other workers and customers) and occupational skills. Being jobless all summer also increases their risk of social isolation (staying at home), hanging out on the street, and exposure to or participation in urban violence and delinquent behavior

The Plummeting Labor Market Fortunes of Teens and Young Adults

Employment prospects for teens and young adults in the nation's 100 largest metropolitan areas plummeted between 2000 and 2011. On a number of measures -- employment rates, labor force underutilization, unemployment, and year-round joblessness -- teens and young adults fared poorly, and sometimes disastrously. While labor market problems affected all young people, some groups had better outcomes than others: Non-Hispanic whites, those from higher income households, those with work experience, and those with higher levels of education were more successful in the labor market. In particular, education and previous work experience were most strongly associated with employment.Policy and program efforts to reduce youth joblessness and labor force underutilizationshould focus on the following priorities: incorporating more work-based learning (such as apprenticeships, co-ops, and internships) into education and training; creating tighter linkages between secondary and post-secondary education; ensuring that training meets regional labor market needs; expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit; and facilitating the transition of young people into the labor market through enhanced career counseling, mentoring, occupational and work-readiness skills development, and the creation of short-term subsidized jobs

An ontology for risk management of digital collections

Maintaining accessibility to and understanding of digital information over time is a complex challenge that often requires contributions and interventions from a variety of individuals and organizations. The processes of preservation planning and evaluation are fundamentally implicit and share similar complexity. Both demand comprehensive knowledge and understanding of every aspect of to-be-preserved content and the contexts within which preservation is undertaken. Consequently, means are required for the identification, documentation and association of those properties of data, representation and management mechanisms that in combination lend value, facilitate interaction and influence the preservation process. These properties may be almost limitless in terms of diversity, but are integral to the establishment of classes of risk exposure, and the planning and deployment of appropriate preservation strategies. We explore several research objectives within the course of this thesis. Our main objective is the conception of an ontology for risk management of digital collections. Incorporated within this are our aims to survey the contexts within which preservation has been undertaken successfully, the development of an appropriate methodology for risk management, the evaluation of existing preservation evaluation approaches and metrics, the structuring of best practice knowledge and lastly the demonstration of a range of tools that utilise our findings. We describe a mixed methodology that uses interview and survey, extensive content analysis, practical case study and iterative software and ontology development. We build on a robust foundation, the development of the Digital Repository Audit Method Based on Risk Assessment. We summarise the extent of the challenge facing the digital preservation community (and by extension users and creators of digital materials from many disciplines and operational contexts) and present the case for a comprehensive and extensible knowledge base of best practice. These challenges are manifested in the scale of data growth, the increasing complexity and the increasing onus on communities with no formal training to offer assurances of data management and sustainability. These collectively imply a challenge that demands an intuitive and adaptable means of evaluating digital preservation efforts. The need for individuals and organisations to validate the legitimacy of their own efforts is particularly prioritised. We introduce our approach, based on risk management. Risk is an expression of the likelihood of a negative outcome, and an expression of the impact of such an occurrence. We describe how risk management may be considered synonymous with preservation activity, a persistent effort to negate the dangers posed to information availability, usability and sustainability. Risk can be characterised according to associated goals, activities, responsibilities and policies in terms of both their manifestation and mitigation. They have the capacity to be deconstructed into their atomic units and responsibility for their resolution delegated appropriately. We continue to describe how the manifestation of risks typically spans an entire organisational environment, and as the focus of our analysis risk safeguards against omissions that may occur when pursuing functional, departmental or role-based assessment. We discuss the importance of relating risk-factors, through the risks themselves or associated system elements. To do so will yield the preservation best-practice knowledge base that is conspicuously lacking within the international digital preservation community. We present as research outcomes an encapsulation of preservation practice (and explicitly defined best practice) as a series of case studies, in turn distilled into atomic, related information elements. We conduct our analyses in the formal evaluation of memory institutions in the UK, US and continental Europe. Furthermore we showcase a series of applications that use the fruits of this research as their intellectual foundation. Finally we document our results in a range of technical reports and conference and journal articles. We present evidence of preservation approaches and infrastructures from a series of case studies conducted in a range of international preservation environments. We then aggregate this into a linked data structure entitled PORRO, an ontology relating preservation repository, object and risk characteristics, intended to support preservation decision making and evaluation. The methodology leading to this ontology is outlined, and lessons are exposed by revisiting legacy studies and exposing the resource and associated applications to evaluation by the digital preservation community

DCC Digital Curation Manual: Instalment on Open Source for Digital Curation

Instalment on the role of open source software within the digital curation lifecycle. Describes a range of explicit digital curation application areas for open source, some examples of existing uses of open source software, a selection of open source applications of possible interest to the digital curator, some quantifiable statistics illustrating the value of open source software and some advice and pointers for institutions planning on introducing these technologies into their own information infrastructures

Discrimination of the notifiable pathogen Gyrodactylus salaris from G-thymalli (Monogenea) using statistical classifiers applied to morphometric data

The identification and discrimination of 2 closely related and morphologically similar species of Gyrodactylus, G. salaris and G. thymalli, were assessed using the statistical classification methodologies Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) and k-Nearest Neighbours (KNN). These statistical methods were applied to morphometric measurements made on the gyrodactylid attachment hooks. The mean estimated classification percentages of correctly identifying each species were 98±1% (LDA) and 97±9% (KNN) for G. salaris and 99±9% (LDA) and 73±2% (KNN) for G. thymalli. The analysis was expanded to include another 2 closely related species and the new classification efficiencies were 94±6%(LDA) and 98±0% (KNN) for G. salaris; 98±2% (LDA) and 72±6% (KNN) for G. thymalli; 86±7% (LDA) and 91±8% (KNN) for G. derjavini ; and 76±5% (LDA) and 77±7% (KNN) for G. truttae. The higher correct classification scores of G. salaris and G. thymalli by the LDA classifier in the 2-species analysis over the 4-species analysis suggested the development of a 2-stage classifier. The mean estimated correct classification scores were 99±97% (LDA) and 99±99% (KNN) for the G. salaris±G. thymalli pairing and 99±4% (LDA) and 99±92% (KNN) for the G. derjavini±G. truttae pairing. Assessment of the 2-stage classifier using only marginal hook data was very good with classification efficiencies of 100% (LDA) and 99±6%(KNN) for the G. salaris±G. thymalli pairing and 97±2%(LDA) and 9±2%(KNN) for the G. derjavini±G. truttae pairing. Paired species were then discriminated individually in the second stage of the classifier using data from the full set of hooks. These analyses demonstrate that using the methods of LDA and KNN statistical classification, the discrimination of closely related and pathogenic species of Gyrodactylus may be achieved using data derived from light microscope studies

P2_4 Up, Up in the Atmosphere

This paper is an investigation into the physical feasibility of Mary Poppins flying away using the lift generated on her umbrella from a natural wind source. The best case scenario used was adapted from the film such that the umbrella’s dimensions were greater and there was no drag force. A vertical wind speed of 37mph or a wind speed of 118mph at an inclination of 18.3°  would be required to lift a 60kg Mary Poppins off the ground. Taking into account that the pressure exerted would most likely destroy normal umbrellas, it was determined that materials with a greater tensile strength such as aluminium and polyester would be required to withstand the force of the wind