A mandate to preserve : assessing the inaugural Newspaper Archive Summit

This paper reviews the issues of newspaper preservation confronting us today and how they were applied in the structure and content of the Newspaper Archive Summit held in Columbia, Missouri. Outcomes and takeaways of Summit I are discussed, as well as the potential shape and content of Summit II

Digital archives at MU : the J-School and beyond

As the J-School prepares to celebrate its centenary in 2008, it is also heading toward a digital crossroads. The new Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, with its mandate to explore new frontiers of news gathering in the Digital Age, will train the next generation of journalists in a host of technologies that are already wreaking fundamental changes in the profession. Even as the very existence of traditional newspapers is increasingly called into question, the University of Missouri is poised to produce visionary leaders and practitioners who will guide journalism and publishing through the current technological upheaval into the next hundred years. Web pages, video, RSS feeds, pod- and videocasts, and delivery devices yet to be invented will be there to challenge and inspire students and faculty in their state-of-the-art new facility. And where will all this multimedia journalism end up? News archives, famously the in-box for the first draft of history, must also rise to the requirements of this flood of digital output. Unfortunately, the fragility of digital information in any form is a threatening paradigm in its own right. There are no assurances that any digital content produced tonight by any newspaper will survive in its database or on its CD-ROM disks for ten or fifteen years, let alone the next hundred. The complexity of current media (revisit the list above: web pages, video, RSS feeds, pod- and videocasts and those media still to be invented) only work to shorten that time frame. For all the technological wonders the J-School will be producing, the legacy of that material is at best unknown, and at worst, vanished. I hope this short statement of the seriousness of digital preservation issues will set the stage for the rest of this report

Missouri J-School and the 'backstory'

When MU's School of Journalism opened its doors in 1908, Associated Press was already 54 years old-a venerable history. However, one of the things AP didn't pay much attention to until very recently was its archives. As a result, its news legacy, in pieces, only goes back to about 1937. That is a gap of more than 90 years. Fast forward to right now-June, 2008. The 162-year-old AP just released a fascinating report on a topic of wide interest in publishing: How are Gen Y'ers and the Millennials, those coveted 18- to 34-year-olds, consuming news in this mobile age? How do they get it? What do they read? What do they want? How do you advertise to them? ... When I visited Columbia in April, our discussions focused on two areas - the prospects for rescuing the Missourian's digital archives, and how the Reynolds Journalism Institute might contribute to research in news preservation, especially in the context of hosting the development of a formal repository. The following proposes steps toward that goal.Introduction. 1908-2008: The Missourian 'backstory' ; 'SWOT' analysis ; The project 'backstory' -- Two years later. The Missourian ; Reynolds Journalism Institute ; Towards a news repository at MU -- Eight steps. Step 1. Designate a project owner ; Step 2. Form a project team ; Step 3 (concurrent). Inform yourselves -- Step 4. Hire an archivist ; Step 5. Establish priorities ; Step 6. Undertake a small-scale or pilot project ; Step 7. Go after grant money ; Step 8. Hold a symposium -- Can this be done? Is the backstory worth saving? ; Further reading

Investigating the Roles and Requirements, Manifestations and Management of Metadata in the Creation of Reliable and Preservation of Authentic Electronic Entities Created by Dynamic, Interactive and Experiential Systems: Report on the Work and Findings of the Interpares 2 Description Cross Domain Group

Metadata that is associated with either an information system or an information object for purposes of description, administration, legal requirements, technical functionality, use and usage, and preservation, plays a critical role in ensuring the creation, management, preservation and use and re-use of trustworthymaterials, including records. Recordkeeping1 metadata, of which one key type is archival description, plays a particularly important role in documenting the reliability and authenticity of records and recordkeeping systemsas well as the various contexts (legal-administrative, provenancial, procedural, documentary, and technical) within which records are created and kept as they move across space and time. In the digital environment, metadata is also the means by which it is possible to identify how record components – those constituent aspects of a digital record that may be managed, stored and used separately by the creator or the preserver – can be reassembled to generate an authentic copy of a record or reformulated per a user’s request as a customized output package.Issues relating to the creation, capture, management and preservation of adequate metadata are, therefore, integral to any research study addressing the reliability and authenticity of digital entities, regardless of the community, sector or institution within which they are being created. The InterPARES 2 Description Cross-Domain Group (DCD) examined the conceptualization, definitions, roles, and current functionality of metadata and archival description in terms of requirements generated by InterPARES 12. Because of the needs to communicate the work of InterPARES in a meaningful way across not only other disciplines, but also different archival traditions; to interface with, evaluate and inform existing standards, practices and other research projects; and to ensure interoperability across the three focus areas of InterPARES2, the Description Cross-Domain also addressed its research goals with reference to wider thinking about and developments in recordkeeping and metadata. InterPARES2 addressed not only records, however, but a range of digital information objects (referred to as “entities” by InterPARES 2, but not to be confused with the term “entities” as used in metadata and database applications) that are the products and by-products of government, scientific and artistic activities that are carried out using dynamic, interactive or experiential digital systems. The nature of these entities was determined through a diplomatic analysis undertaken as part of extensive case studies of digital systems that were conducted by the InterPARES 2 Focus Groups. This diplomatic analysis established whether the entities identified during the case studies were records, non-records that nevertheless raised important concerns relating to reliability and authenticity, or “potential records.” To be determined to be records, the entities had to meet the criteria outlined by archival theory – they had to have a fixed documentary format and stable content. It was not sufficient that they be considered to be or treated as records by the creator. “Potential records” is a new construct that indicates that a digital system has the potential to create records upon demand, but does not actually fix and set aside records in the normal course of business. The work of the Description Cross-Domain Group, therefore, addresses the metadata needs for all three categories of entities.Finally, since “metadata” as a term is used today so ubiquitously and in so many different ways by different communities, that it is in peril of losing any specificity, part of the work of the DCD sought to name and type categories of metadata. It also addressed incentives for creators to generate appropriate metadata, as well as issues associated with the retention, maintenance and eventual disposition of the metadata that aggregates around digital entities over time