Besser--NINCH-recent Preservation 12/8/01 1 Recent Digital Preservation Activities Howard Besser UCLA School of Education & Information

Besser--NINCH-recent Preservation 12/8/01 2 Recent Digital Preservation Activities -  The Problem  Preservation Repositories  Preservation Metadata  Other Digital Preservation Activities  Special concerns of Cult Heritage community

Besser--NINCH-recent Preservation 12/8/01 3 Serious Longevity Problems  What we know from prior widespread digital file formats  Previous formats required little ongoing intervention (remote storage facilities, Iron Mtn); digital formats require intense ongoing management  The Short Life of Digital Info-

Besser--NINCH-recent Preservation 12/8/01 4 The Short Life of Digital Info: Digital Longevity Problems  Disappearing Information  The Viewing Problem  The Scrambling Problem  The Inter-relation Problem  The Custodial Problem  The Translation Problem

Besser--NINCH-recent Preservation 12/8/01 5 Older Longevity Projects  CPA Task Force  Getty “Time & Bits” Conference & Follow-ups-  Preservation experiments in US and Europe  NEDLIB, CURL, Michigan  Internet Archive  Long Now

Besser--NINCH-recent Preservation 12/8/01 6 Preservation Repositories: OAIS Model  High-level reference model describing submission, organization and management, and continuing access  Conceptual framework for different organizations to share discussions with a common language  Producers, consumers, management, actual repository  SIP, DIP, AIP  AIP consists of data objects plus representation info (Content, Preservation Description, Packaging, Descriptive)  Originally developed for Space Science community

Besser--NINCH-recent Preservation 12/8/01 7 Preservation Repositories: Projects based on OAIS Model  CEDARS  NEDLIB  Pandora  CDL  OCLC/RLG Working Group on Preservation Metadata, Attributes of a Trusted Digital Repository, August 2001-

Besser--NINCH-recent Preservation 12/8/01 8 OCLC/RLG Digital Repository Attributes _ Administrative responsibility _ Organizational viability _ Financial sustainability _ Technological suitability _ System security _ Procedural accountability

Besser--NINCH-recent Preservation 12/8/01 9 OCLC/RLG Selected Recommendations _ Policies, Certification processes, Risk management, Persistent ID, Migration/Emulation experiments _ Stakeholders meet to decide how to describe what is in a dig repository _ Examine special properties of particular classes of digital objects _ Technical standards for exchange and interoperability btwn repositories _ Develop projects and case studies _ Copyright issues

Besser--NINCH-recent Preservation 12/8/01 10 Preservation Metadata  OCLC/RLG Working Group on Preservation Metadata, Preservation Metadata for Digital Objects: A Review of the State of the Art, January  OCLC/RLG Working Group on Preservation Metadata, A Recommendation for Content Information, October 2001

Besser--NINCH-recent Preservation 12/8/01 11 Other Digital Preservation Activities-  LC Natl Dig Info Infrastructure & Preservation  InterPARES  Emulation Projects  E-Journal Archiving  ERPANET  Persistent Naming

Besser--NINCH-recent Preservation 12/8/01 12 LC’s National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program _ Authorized Dec 2000 _ LC, Dept of Commerce, NARA, White House Office of Sci & Tech Policy _ with help from CLIR, NLM, NAL, OCLC, RLG _ Ongoing collab process _ Commissioned papers on preserving: the Web, periodicals, digital sound, E-Books, Digital TV, Digital Video

Besser--NINCH-recent Preservation 12/8/01 13 InterPARES International Research on Permanent Authentication Records in Electronic Systems _ Ongoing international archival world project examining how to make electronically-generated records last over time _ Developing the theoretical and methodological knowledge needed, then will formulate model policies, strategies, and standards _ Next year will be extended to include images and rich media

Besser--NINCH-recent Preservation 12/8/01 14 Emulation Projects _ CAMiLEON (Michigan/Leeds) _ NEDLIB

Besser--NINCH-recent Preservation 12/8/01 15 E-Journal Archiving _ Issues –License, don’t own; may not be even able to obtain right to make archival copy –Increasingly no paper back-up at all –Usually we don’t have the important redundancy factor _ Mellon funded projects (2001) –Yale, Harvard, Penn working w/individual publishers –Cornell, NYPL--specific disciplines –MIT exploring characteristics that change (dynamic)\ –Stanford--archiving software tools

Besser--NINCH-recent Preservation 12/8/01 16 Electronic Resource Preservation and Access NETwork (ERPANET) _ RLG initiative just launched as European consortium _ Best practices and skills development for digital preservation of cultural heritage and scientific objects _ 3 year project launched Nov 2001; 1.2 million Euros

Besser--NINCH-recent Preservation 12/8/01 17 NEA 2001 grant to BAVC for $150,000 _ “To support development and dissemination of a DVD that contains a curriculum for the preservation of electronic art. The DVD will feature a preservation overview; discussions with conservators, artists, curators and technicians; a curriculum to train professionals in the field and project case studies to conserve electronic art.”

Besser--NINCH-recent Preservation 12/8/01 18 Persistent Naming  URNs  Handles  PURLs  Re-directs

Besser--NINCH-recent Preservation 12/8/01 19 What’s special about Cult Heritage Materials? _ Images & rich media _ Inter-relationships btwn parts _ For Contemporary Art: What is the Work?-

Besser--NINCH-recent Preservation 12/8/01 20 LeWitt: Wall Drawing 340

Besser--NINCH-recent Preservation 12/8/01 21 Installing LeWitt

Besser--NINCH-recent Preservation 12/8/01 22 LeWitt Install Directions

Besser--NINCH-recent Preservation 12/8/01 23 Complexity of Rich Media _ Works often have artistic nature (including video games) _ Enormous number of elements can, at times, be very important to preserve (pacing, original artifact, elements used to construct the artifact) _ Too complex to save every one of these aspects for every type of material _ Importance of saving documentation

Besser--NINCH-recent Preservation 12/8/01 24 What can we do specific to Electronic Art? _ Works themselves may no longer even exist; in many cases, what we can save amounts to forensic evidence _ Enormous number of elements can, at times, be very important to preserve (pacing, original artifact, elements used to construct the artifact) _ Too complex to save every one of these aspects for every type of material _ Importance of saving pieces, representations, and documentation _ Involve the artists to capture their intentions _ Importance of Standards _ Familiarize ourselves with recent conservation developments (Who Knows?, TechArcheology, Tate, IMAP)

Besser--NINCH-recent Preservation 12/8/01 25 Standards for encoding artists intentions (group efforts w/i Cult Heritage community) _ Artists Interviews Project, Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage , Modern Art: Who Cares ( _ TechArcheology: A Symposium on Installation Preservation (SFMOMA) _ More recent SFMOMA/Tate collaborations _ IMAP _ Guggenheim’s Variable Media

Besser--NINCH-recent Preservation 12/8/01 26 Structural Metadata Standards for Encoding Multimedia- (no time for details) _ SMIL _ MPEG 4

Besser--NINCH-recent Preservation 12/8/01 27 A few questions the NINCH community should address _ Special issues raised by non-library institutions _ Special issues raised by images and rich media _ What is the work (or salient points we need to preserve)? _ Bring the arts communities (artist intent, BAVC) together with the preservation repository communities and the preservation metadata communities _ Specifically get Cult Heritage communities involved with the selected OCLC/RLG recommendations _ What organizations will take responsibility to save today’s digital “ephemeral” materials (online ‘zines, arts discussion groups, etc.)? _ Get cult heritage groups started on working to make sure that structure standards incorporate our works

Besser--NINCH-recent Preservation 12/8/01 28 Recent Digital Preservation Activities Howard Besser UCLA School of Education & Information