what i’m going to cover
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Digital preservation – State of the game on the library lawns Digital Futures International Forum National Archives of Australia, 19 September 2007 Colin Webb Director, Web Archiving & Digital Preservation National Library of Australia [email protected]. What I’m going to cover. - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Digital preservation – State of the game on the library lawns
Digital Futures International ForumNational Archives of Australia, 19 September 2007
Colin WebbDirector, Web Archiving& Digital Preservation
National Library of [email protected]
What I’m going to cover
• The story behind the title• Some critical context• What I see as the state of play in the library
sector
A story• On the lawns v. in the vault
• Context is king!
Libraries?
• Local, organisational, special, national, state/provincial, school, university, …
Kinds of information?
• “Published”, “unpublished”, “grey literature”, information brokerage
• Access Access Access!!!
• Focus on publications• By no means all that libraries hold:
– Significant unpublished digital collections, significant preservation challenges
• BUT for today, publicly available digital materials
A publication is information, regardless of its format or method of delivery, that is made available to the general public, or to an identified public, either free of charge or for a fee.
Definition from: PANDORA Selection Guidelineshttp://pandora.nla.gov.au/selectionguidelines.html#pubdefinition
Game of threes
Kinds of digital materials:
• Online
• E-journals
• Physical format digital publications
Issues impacting on preservation:
• Collecting
• Access
• “Preservation”
Preservation issue clusters:
• Data management
• Maintaining accessibility & meaning
• Responsibility, sustainability, resources
Collecting to preserve
(Strengths and weaknesses of libraries re digital preservation)
• Must collect in order to preserve
• No obligation on creators to look after, or to create in a way that enables preservation
• No obligation on creators to deposit (at C’th level)
• World Wild Web – survival unchanged almost impossible
• Collecting a preservation prerequisite and imperative – getting material into a safe(ish) place
Collecting to preserve
• Legitimate priority for preservation
• Achievements – national libraries, IA, IIPC
• International Internet Preservation Consortium– 26 members, mostly national libraries
Collecting becomes preservation?
• Resource preoccupations– Funding allocations– Brain power and energy to address collecting
obstacles
• IIPC preoccupations – collecting tools• Database collecting - Xinq
Collecting to preservation
NLA Review
• Balancing research quality collections against comprehensiveness?
• Achievements over 12 years
• Dilemmas – what and how to collect for preservation– Resources driven
– Legal deposit
– Changing nature of online materials
Access and preservation
(Strengths and weaknesses of libraries re digital preservation)
• Access imperative – critical driver for libraries – federated resource discovery, federated getting, PI’s
• Preservation = access
• Access as test of preservation
• Access in short-term, access in the future
Access and preservation
Case study – physical format digital publications
• Less concern over collecting
• Preservation attention linked to access
• Concern over TPM’s
• Shifting to concerns over safety of the current “safe place”
• Workflow development
Preservation as preservation
(Strengths and weaknesses of libraries re digital preservation)
• Collecting & access – both part of, and context for, digital preservation
• Data management
• Obsolescence management
• Responsibility, sustainability, resources
Preservation as preservation
• Case study of surprising success – – e-journals: KB and publishers– Data management– Emulation– Collecting model (deposit)– Access model– Responsibility, sustainability?
Preservation driven by library needs
• Case study – online materials - – IIPC Preservation Working Group
• Case study – tools development – – Australian Partnership for Sustainable
Repositories (APSR)• METS profile
• AONS (Automatic Obsolescence Notification)
Where we are now on the library lawns …
• Tools, workflows, end to end hypothesis• Risk assessment• Detailed pres planning• Making it all work?
• Making it work for us as individual libraries?• Making it work for communities of libraries?• Making it work for communities?
Where we are now on the library lawns …
• Collaboration – recognising our differences, learning from each other, plugging-in tools to business-appropriate workflows
Where we are now on the library lawns …
• Sustainability?
– dependencies of vision, skills, management , funding, suitable legislative support?
– Or preservation won’t happen, regardless of the collaboration, workflows, tools, planning
If we fail to preserve …
The vaults will be empty …
the lawns only occupied by fools trying to imagine the knowledge of the past …
Thank you