opf annual report 2010-2011

8/6/2019 OPF Annual Report 2010-2011

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Contents

Chairmans Statement.........................

About...................................................

Highlights.............................................

Projects................................................

Governance.........................................

Resources............................................

Membership........................................

OPF Timeline........................................

2012 Preview.......................................

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10

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5

6

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About

The real challenge of digital preservaon is long-term access

to digital content. Since the beginning of the digital era,

formats have become obsolete and content has become

inaccessible. The rapid innovaon that drives the digital

world limits the lifespan of soware. Soware becomes

obsolete from a technical perspecve or unsupportable from

a commercial perspecve. Therefore, preserving just the bits

that make up digital content is not enough. It is essenal to

take acve steps to ensure that future generaons will have

meaningful, contextual access to the content that is locked

up in todays digital material.

The Open Planets Foundaon (OPF) was founded on 1st

June 2010. It is a not-for-prot organisaon inspired by and

building on the pioneering work of the EU co-funded Planets

project. Planets successfully developed digital preservaon

best pracces, prototype tools and demonstrators that were

validated by the cultural heritage sector as a solid basis for a

soluon that addresses the challenge and accessing digital

content for the long-term.

The OPF is further developing this suite of tools and pracces

and maturing them into a comprehensive open source range

of soware oerings. The OPF provides digital preservaon

best pracce guidance and tools that cover preservaonplanning, cosng models, format idencaon and

characterisaon.

The founders of the OPF foresee that making tools available

under an open source licence where and when possible will

smulate the adopon of digital preservaon pracces;

wider adopon will increase sustainability due to the size of

the community of immediate stakeholders.

The OPF plays an acve role in further developing the open

source components for its suite by means of connuous

involvement with the community through requirementsmanagement, architectural guidance, conguraon

management support and development infrastructure

support.

The OPF products and services:

Meet digital preservaon needs of archives and libraries

at naonal scale

Are focused on praccal soluons

Provide funconal products and services, which are

open source, extensible and non-proprietary

Are posioned to deliver value for money

Have commied internaonal support from exisng

partners and growing interest from libraries, archives

and industry

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Background

The OPFs mission is

to ensure that its members

around the world are able to meet

their digital preservaon challenges

with a best pracce strategy and

soluons that are widely adopted

and acvely developed by thecultural heritage sector and

beyond.

The founders of the OPF believe that in order

to ensure sustainability and economy of scale of digital

preservaon there must be support by value-added services

and digital preservaon expert tools. The OPF founders also

believe that this will require at least 80% of naonal heritage

organisaons to adopt a digital preservaon pracce by

2015.

The community needs decision pracces and tools that

support the process of determining when, what and how

to safeguard this long term access to digital content. They

need to be alerted when digital content is endangered,

decide what needs to be preserved and test how this can be

done. Content holders tradionally are very well organised to

decide about what to preserve, but it is the missing whenand how where OPF pracses and tooling will prove their

value.

Objecves


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Developer Collaboratory

Practoner Community

Highlights

The community established by the OPF brings together

praconers and developers to build praccal soluons

to address the challenges of long-term access to digital

content.

We work closely with our members to idenfy and

understand their digital preservaon problems and

ascertain their requirements for tools and services. We

have set up templates to help praconers to further dene

and focus these requirements to create concrete use cases

for development work. By documenng this informaon in

the OPF wiki (hp://wiki.opf-labs.org/display/REQ/Home),

members with similar problems can share ideas and

experiences, avoid duplicaon of eort and reduce costs.

The OPF hosts hackathons throughout the year which give

the opportunity for practoners and developers to meet

face-to-face and work directly with one another to develop

praccal soluons for specic digital preservaon issues.

The resulng tools are available to the OPF members to test

and provide feedback for further development work.

Guided by the OPF Technical and Architecture Advisory

Board, a best-of-breed development infrastructure has

been set up to support the digital preservaon technical

community. Distributed source control repositories from

GitHub are combined with the powerful Atlassian tool set,

including the Conuence wiki, the JIRA issue tracker, and

the Bamboo integrated build server. This infrastructure has

been adopted by the AQuA and SCAPE projects (see page

5), as well as being used by the OPF to manage our own

code and resources.

The original Planets soware has been revised and

refactored in order to make it more sustainable, as part

of an on-going process of reviewing research outputs to

generate producon tools. We have made the original

Planets code smaller, more modular, and easier to deploy.

We connually simplify the components of our soware

suite, focussing it more keenly on our members needs.

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Website

The OPF launched its 2.0 website (hp://www.

openplanetsfoundaon.org/) in November 2010. It oers

informaon about the OPF and its members, the projects

it is involved in, and publicises relevant conferences and

exhibions. In addion, it provides a plaorm for digitalpreservaon praconers and developers to post blogs on

the challenges they face, tool developments, and to invite

feedback from the community.

Digital preservaon experts from around the world have

contributed blogs and have commented on a wide-range

of topics such as bit rot, migraon and normalisaon,

emulaon, format idencaon, format registry eco-

systems, JPEG2000, and digital preservaon market

research.

OPF website

Github

Visulisaon of rst years

development actvity

OPF wiki


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Conferences and Events

Publicaons and Papers

Highlights

Oracle Preservaon and Archiving Special Interest Group

(PASIG) Meeng Madrid, July 2010

Presenng OPF: a pragmac community supporng praccal

tools and pracces

iPres Vienna, Spetember 2010

Introducing OPF to the global digital preservaon community

JISC Dev8D Developer DaysLondon, February 2011

Outreach to the UK Higher Educaon developers community

to address long term access challenges


(PASIG) Meeng London, April 2011

An overview of digital preservaon over the last years and

development of architectures

AQuA Hackathon Leeds, April 2011

Praconers and developers working together to solve

praccal digital preservaon problems

UDFR Stakeholder meengWashington, April 2011

Requirements and technical involvement with a global format

registry development

EU meeng The Future of the Past Luxembourg, May 2011

Meeng to establish priories for research in digital

preservaon for the next Framework Programme (FP8)


(PASIG) Meeng California, May 2011

Developing digital preservaon architectures and future roleof PASIG

A New Registry for Digital Preservaon: Outline Proposal

Bill Roberts, September 2010

http://www.openplanetsfoundation.org/new-registry-

digital-preservaon-outline-proposal

Digital Preservaon and Long Term Access Funconality

Cambridge Judge Business School, December 2010

http://www.openplanetsfoundation.org/blogs/2010-12-

16-market-research-cambridge-judge-business-school-

part-2

Aligning Naonal Approaches to Digital Preservaon

Estonia, May 2011

Internaonal collaboraon, discussions on standards,

cercaon and accreditaon

JHOVE2 WorkshopRome, May 2011

Direct involvement with JHOVE2 characterisaon tool and itsfuture development and maintenance

OPF HackathonAmsterdam, November 2010

The OPF hosted a 3-day event for both praconers and

developers to work together. The rst day provided an

overview of the OPFs requirement and development process

and the delegates worked together in groups to dene

requirements for a selecon of OPF tools. Days 2 and 3 were

spent dening the requirements into solid use cases and

collaborang and hacking the tools.

Delegates commented:

Mixing developers with praconers gave me a very useful

insight in to how tools should be developed.

4OPF Hackathon at the Internaonal Instute of Social History,

Amsterdam

A New Registry for Digital Preservaon: Conceptual Overview

Bill Roberts, January 2011

http://openplanetsfoundation.org/sites/default/files/

OPF_A_New_Registry_Conceptual_Overview_v1%201.pdf

Planets Project: Preserving Delicate Digital Materials

Mulmedia Informaon & Technology, Vol 37, Number 1

Bram van der Werf and Clive Billenness, February 2011

http://www.cilip.org.uk/get-involved/special-interest-

groups/mulmedia/journal/pages/journalcurrenssue.aspx

Introducing the Open Planets Foundaon

ARC Magazine

Bram van der Werf, June 2011

hp://www.archives.org.uk/images/documents/arc/arc%20

june%202011.pdf


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Projects

The SCAlable Preservaon Environments (SCAPE) project

is co-funded by the European Commission under FP7 and

led by the Austrian Instute of Technology. The OPF joins

experts from memory insons, data centres, research

labs, universies, and industrial rms in researching and

developing scalable preservaon systems.

SCAPE will develop infrastructure and tools for scalable

preservaon acons; by providing a framework for

automated, quality-assured preservaon workows and

by integrang these components with a policy-based

preservaon planning and watch system. These concrete

project results will be validated within three large-scale

Testbeds from diverse applicaon areas: Digital Repositories

from the library community, Web Content from the web

archiving community, and Research Data Sets from the

scienc community. Each Testbed has been selected

because it highlights unique challenges.

SCAPE will develop scalable services for planning and

execuon of instuonal preservaon strategies on an open

source plaorm that orchestrates semi-automated workows

for large-scale, heterogeneous collecons of complex digital

objects.

The OPF has three key roles in the SCAPE project:

It leads the SCAPE training and sustainability acvies

It provides technical integraon of Planets and

SCAPE technology

It contributes to outreach and disseminaon acvies

working with its user community to enhance the impact

of SCAPE.

hp://www.scape-project.eu/

Parcipang in projects helps the OPF to expand its

knowledge in digital preservaon R&D and build a widernetwork to benets its members. The OPF will also play a

role in inuencing future digital preservaon projects. The

OPF is currently a consorum partner in SCAPE and AQuA.

Automang Quality Assurance (AQuA) is a JISC-funded

collaboraon between the University of Leeds, University of

York, The Brish Library and the Open Planets Foundaon

aiming to address quality issues in digised content by

applying tools to automate the validaon process.

AQuA bought together content holders and developers at

two mashup events. The content holders presented their

problemac digised content and arculated requirements

for their validaon. The developers were paired with the

content holders to further discuss the isses and apply tools

to automate the detecon and idencaon of preservaon

and quality issues in the collecon.

During the three-day mashup events, content holders and

developers documented their acvies in the OPF wiki:

Collecons: an overview of the digised content and

samples from the content holders

Issues: a detailed account of actual or potenal

preservaon issues in the collecon

Soluons: specic soluons to the issues addressed

with links to the code

The OPFs role was to provide administrave support andtechnical resources through its members. It also helped to

sustain the outputs from the events.

Since the events, one prototype has been turned into a

edgling JHOVE2 format module. Two other prototypes

are being integrated into The Brish Librarys open source

content proling and characterisaon toolset.

AQuA aendees connue to contribute to the wiki even

aer the events and the resources on the wiki have received

interest from the wider digital preservaon community.

hp://wiki.opf-labs.org/display/AQuA/Home

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Governance

Board of Directors Technical and Architecture

Advisory Board

Adam Farquhar Chairman

The Brish Library

Bjarne Andersen Director

The State and University Library, Denmark

Neil Grindley Director

Joint Informaon Systems Commiee (JISC)

Hans Jansen Director

The Naonal Library of The Netherlands

Max Kaiser Director

The Austrian Naonal Library

Ross King Director

with Special Responsibility for Financial Maers

The Austrian Instute of Technology

Jacqueline Slats Director

The Naonal Archives of The Netherlands

Asger Askov Blekinge


Andrew Jackson

The Brish Library

Andrew Lindley

The Austrian Instute of Technology

David Tarrant

University of Southampton

Carl Wilson

The Brish Library

The OPF is governed by its Board of Directors who are elected

by its members at the Annual General Meeng. The Board

comprises senior managers from its member organisaons

who have responsibility for or a special interest in digital

preservaon. The acve Board meets monthly to review

progress against the business plan and provide strategic

direcon.

To support the Board of Directors, the OPF has established

the Technical and Architecture Advisory Board. Its key

objecves are to make praccal, technical decisions,

providing direcon on new technologies to support. The

Technical Board comprises senior developers and architects

from member organisaons. They are involved in engaging

the wider developer community and acvely parcipate

in decision-making processes to support the development

of producon quality soware. The hold monthly calls to

monitor development progress and ensure the OPF soluons

are deployable and applicable for use in libraries and archives.

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Technical Resources

Year One Expenditure

The OPF has agreements with its aliate members, the

Vienna University of Technology and HATII at the University

of Glasgow, to connue to host an R&D version of the Plato

planning tool, and test copora, respecvely.

In addion to its employees, the OPF has secured addional

technical resources from partners, and its aliate member

organisaons (as part of their in-kind contribuons) to

support its members needs.

7

Sta

Bram van der Werf

Execuve Director

Rebecca McGuinness

Membership and Communicaons Manager

David Tarrant

Senior Developer

Resources

Sta salaries, naonal insurance and pensioncontribuons

Technical resources: hire of digital preservaon

specialists to support members needs

Outreach acvies: member events, visits to

current and potenal members, prole raising

in the digital preservaon community, travel

sponsorship for members

Community building and communicaons:

Development and maintenance of the OPF 2.0website, wiki and development collaboratory

Professional services and nancial costs: payroll,

management accounts, bank charges and foreign

exchange fees

Start up costs: recruitment costs, solicitors fees,

insurance, oce equipment and sta training

Total

82, 181

29,247

19,306

7,186

6,315

22,291

116,526


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Membership

8

Member Benets

OPF Digital Preservaon Community

By joining the OPF, members become a part of an internonal

eort to develop digital preservaon best pracces, tools

and technologies. Members benet from:

Support for tools and services

Peer-reviews of their organisaons systems and tooldevelopement

Reports and surveys being carried out on their behalf

into specic areas of digital preservaon

Priority booking and free aendance at OPF events

A free API licence key for applicable services (format

services)

Exclusive access to results and documentaon from OPF

events

Members are also in a privileged posion to:

Inuence the OPF strategy

Inuence OPF event topics

Shape the tools and services roadmap by providingrequirements and use cases

Test and validate prototype tools and provide feedback

Join an acve community that fosters collaboraon

between preservaon praconers and technical experts

Parcipate in meaningful discussions with digital

preservaon experts from around the world

Our current members are naonal archives, libraries,

higher educaon and research organisaons. They share a

commitment to ensuring eecve long-term access to digital

material.

Charter members are organisaons with a mission and a

responsibility to manage substanal digital content for the

long term. These include major memory instuons (archives,

libraries and museums) in the public or private sector.

Most of these instutes have the need, the infrastructure

and resources to deploy OPF pracces and tools. Charter

members are eligible to nominate representaves from their

organisaon to sit on the OPF Board.

Aliate members are typically academic organisaons with

a strong research and development focus who want to be

part of the scienc network within OPF, developing digitalpreservaon technologies and tools. They include higher

educaon instuons that want to work closely with the OPF

experts and its praconer community to establish the digital

preservaon higher educaon curriculum of the future.

Partnerships

The OPF work in partnership with technology and services

providers and also with exisng digital preservaon

organisaons and coalions.

Charter Members

Aliate Members

Technology&

ServiceP

artners

Partn

er

Initat

ves


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The Royal Library, Denmark


Stanford University Libraries & Academic Informaon

Resources

Membership

HATII at the University of Glasgow

University of Southampton

Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford

Cambridge University Library

Vienna University of Technology

Kings College London

(Centre for e-Research)

University of Portsmouth

Digital Curaon Centre

Aliate Members

9

The Austrian Instute

of Technology

The Austrian Naonal Library

Gopors

The Naonal Library

of The Netherlands

JISC

Microso Research

The Naonal Archives of

The Netherlands

The Danish Naonal Archives

The Naonal Library of Wales

The Brish Library

The Naonal Library of France

Charter Members


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OPF Timeline

The OPF is founded

with 10 charter

members

OPF-labs set up with

JIRA suite

OPF Github

repository

set up

Large-scale refactoring

of the Planets suite

codebase begins

OPF Hackathon,

AmsterdamOPF website 2.0

launched

OPF Technical

& Architecture

Advisory Board formed

OPF website launched

Danish Naonal Archives

join as a charter member

Stanford University

Libraries join as a charter

member

Naonal Library of Wales

joins as a charter member

JISC joins as a

charter member

JISC and OPF establish

group aliate

membership for UK HE

instuons

Naonal Library of France

joins as a charter member

SCAPE project begins

AQuA project begins

Vienna University of

Technology joins as

rst aliate member

50th blog post

on OPF website OPF AGM held in

The Hague

June

2010

July

2010

Nov

2010

Oct

2010

April

2011

March2011

Feb

2011

June

2011

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Tools and Services Roadmap

2011

Over the course of our rst year we have established a strong

technical community. We are condent that this community,

supported by our Technical and Architecture Advisory Board,

is well posioned to produce and maintain tools and best

pracces in the OPF open source collaboratory.

Throughout the rst year it also became apparent that the

requirement process will be our main focus for year two. We

need to increase our capacity to connect theory from R&D

prototypes with the reality of producon pracce.

This requires acve involvement from praconers to

understand the types of tools they need today. Validang

prototypes and beta versions of tools and pracces will be

developed by working closely with praconers. The OPF

will help the, to scope their immediate needs, rather thenfocusing on more funconal and future requirements as the

approach in R&D projects.

In order to strengthen our praconers community, we

will host quarterly member events similar to the AQuA

project events. Members organisaons will be invited to

bring examples of their collecons with which they are

experiencing preservaon issues.

During and aer these events, developers and technical

experts will collaborate with hacking and deployment

acvies.

These events will be fully documented from inial

requirements and use cases through to the hacking and

coding, which we will make available in the OPF collaboratory.

In order to meet dierent needs across our members, each

event will have a topic and specic focus, such as databasearchiving, emulaon, bit-rot, preservaon planning, and

tesng (corpora and testbed).

2012 Preview

11

Planning: the OPF Preservaon

Planning Tool, taking Planets PLATO

into producon

Quarter 2 Quarter 3Quarter 1 Quarter 4

Pricing: making the LIFE3 cost

modelling tool available through the

OPF

Fido: a lightweight command-line

interface for idencaon, powered by

PRONOM signatures

Test corpora: shared sets of realisc

test les, starng with the Planets

Testbed corpora

Collaboratory: the code repository,

issue tracking, and code management

tools

Praconer wiki: sharing use-cases

and soluons to workows and

experiences

Developer wiki: building a common

understanding of our preservaon

soware and systems

Risk analysis tool (RAT): scans

collecons for known preservaon

issues and risks, reported via a trac-

light rang system

Results evaluaon framework

(REF): sharing results from execungpreservaon processes on the Test

Corpora

Format registry eding tool: a Drupal-

based web interface to the PRONOM

data, allowing collaborave eding

supportedprototype

prototype prototype

prototype prototype

prototype

development

not available

development development

development

in REF in REF

beta

beta

beta

beta

beta

prototype

prototype

prototype

prototype

prototype

available available available available

available available available

available

available

available

available

available

available

available

available

available


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Open Planets Foundaon

The Brish Library

Boston Spa

Wetherby

West YorkshireLS23 7BQ

Telephone: +44 (0)1937 54 6822

Email: [email protected]

Web: www.openplanetsfoundaon.org

opf annual report 2010-2011

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