a small archive in the clouds
DESCRIPTION
A short talk for a panel on Cloud Computing at the New England Archivists meeting at Brown University, Providence, RI, Apr 1-2, 2011. The panel was moderated by Anne Sauer (Tufts) and the other speaker was Bill Donovan (BC).TRANSCRIPT
A Small Archive in the Cloud
Using inexpensive tools + open source + cloud computing
... to sleep soundly at night
Ari DavidowJewish Women’s Archive
Presentation for the New England Archivists AssociationApril 2, 2011
10 years+ of audio and video oral histories
6TB Data
Optical Media
are not a preservation format
Optical Media
$10k for a RAID server
Reasonably secure
What if there is a disaster?
Pair with others?
• can we find two other organizations?• each has to buy $20k of servers in
addition to their own• each has to be maintained as
professionally (or better) as we maintain ours....
Cloud Computingto the rescueaws.amazon.com
Step 1: BackupHow to get there?
Jungle Disk – www.jungledisk.com
Digital Asset MgmtPhase One
Admin Entryway to JWA’s WWII online Collection Project, based in Drupal
Administering a media object in Drupal. You will see similar metadata being gathered in our Fedora implementation
Control panel for Amazon Web Services
The first repository: BellaThe least functionality that lets us move the digital contents from old cassettes and minidisks into active curatorial management.
Agile Development
Agile Development
• Put usable tools in people’s hands quickly• Short, iterative programming cycles
(usually, 4-6 weeks)• Use cards/whiteboard to note requests• When you have an acceptable set of cards
that can be done in 4-6 weeks, you have your next cycle planned
Issue Trackingwww.redmine.org
Code Delivery
Our current “let there be no ambiguity” method:• Finished code must be checked into a repository• It must be documented in a wiki or other online
doc tool• We must be able to check out the code, follow
installation instructions, and successfully integrate/launch/run the application
Contents of a typical Oral History
Repository Entryway
Editing metadata for typical Oral History in our Fedora Repository
Phase 2: Islandora
Goals:• Update Bella• Get Drupal content and the parent objects
into active management• Create a place to put “random” archive
assets
The New JWA Islandora/Drupal Interface in progress
What next?
• To find out more about the Jewish Women’s Archive, http://jwa.org• If you also have a small archive in need of asset management and
preservation, please get in touch with the Duraspace Small Archives Solution Community: https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/cmtygp/Small+Archives
• Ari Davidow is teaching a class in Cloud Computing (some programming experience recommended) for Brandeis’ Rabb Graduate Professional Studies Program, starting May 23, 2011: http://www.brandeis.edu/gps/programscourses/schedule/classes/2011/Summer/all
• Follow Ari on Twitter: @aridavidow