Promoting Digital Preservation Partnerships at the U.S. Library of Congress April 2004

Germany, April 2004Digital Partnerships at LC2 Presentation Overview Discuss Library of Congress approach to collaborating on digital content issues Talk about LC internal activities as well as new program to build a network of preservation partners Provide details about specific projects

Germany, April 2004Digital Partnerships at LC3 Challenge is Broad All institutions that collect and keep information must confront digital preservation All must devise ways to manage digital objects across their life cycle Collaboration is vital to identify and leverage solutions Cultural heritage is at risk

Germany, April 2004Digital Partnerships at LC4 Digital Preservation Issues/Questions Issues include: –Rapid technological change –Content volume, volatility, and heterogeneity –Content authenticity –Interoperability among repositories Questions include: –What is the universe of content? –How to appraise/select? –How to preserve objects? –How to manage intellectual property?

Germany, April 2004Digital Partnerships at LC5 Addressing Digital Challenges at LC Internal Activities External Activities

Germany, April 2004Digital Partnerships at LC6 American Memory Gateway to primary sources relating to the history and culture of the United States Includes over 7 million items: photographs, manuscripts, rare books, maps, recorded sound, and moving pictures Developed pioneering practices for managing digital collections

Germany, April 2004Digital Partnerships at LC7 American Memory: Collaboration Collaboration key for funding, developing American Memory collections Ameritech competition: Funding for libraries, museums, and archives to create digital collections –23 collections produced –33 institutions involved

Germany, April 2004Digital Partnerships at LC8 Global Gateway Provides web access to primary source materials of interest to other nations Current projects with Netherlands, Brazil, Russia, and Spain Staff from each country work with LC to select content; collections are bilingual

Germany, April 2004Digital Partnerships at LC9 International Work on Web Preservation LC part of a new international Internet consortium consisting of 12 national libraries Working to: –Develop technical specifications for open source tools to harvest and preserve web content –Share experience and best practices

Germany, April 2004Digital Partnerships at LC10 Current LC Digital Holdings Over 20 Terabytes collected to date Examples include: –Web pages documenting significant events, including Iraq conflict, U.S. national elections –George Mason University 9/11 Archives –American Memory and other digitized collections

Germany, April 2004Digital Partnerships at LC11 Expanding LC Digital Content Collection Identify digital content documenting important topics and arrange for LC to get and sustain in partnership with others Initial interest is public policy web content Other subject areas are under study LC, other institutions must build new infrastructure to meet much larger needs

Germany, April 2004Digital Partnerships at LC12 Addressing Digital Challenges at LC Internal Activities External Activities

Germany, April 2004Digital Partnerships at LC13 NDIIPP Legislation and Funding Created by federal legislation (PL ) in December 2000 Up to $175 million potentially available Preserving Our Digital Heritage plan approved December 2002

Germany, April 2004Digital Partnerships at LC14 NDIIPP Goals Develop a national digital collection and preservation strategy Work with industry, federal agencies, libraries, research institutions, and not-for-profit entities Help identify and preserve at-risk digital content Support development of improved tools, models, and methods for digital preservation

Germany, April 2004Digital Partnerships at LC15 NDIIPP Focus Areas Network of preservation partners Preservation architecture Digital preservation research

Germany, April 2004Digital Partnerships at LC16 Network of Preservation Partners Volume and complexity of digital content calls for a distributed approach LC is providing resources and leadership to construct a network of preservation partners Three primary aspects will be considered: –Content identification and preservation –Business models –Standards and best practices

Germany, April 2004Digital Partnerships at LC17 Content Partnerships First NDIIPP partnership solicitation closed in Nov. 2003; focus is on content Have received many good proposals covering an excellent cross-section of digital content Expect to announce awards by Spring 2004 Important first step in building a national preservation network

Germany, April 2004Digital Partnerships at LC18 NDIIPP Focus Areas Network of preservation partners Preservation architecture Digital preservation research

Germany, April 2004Digital Partnerships at LC19 Preservation Architecture Architecture is a blueprint to guide development of national preservation network Design principles: –Support institutional relationships –Separate preservation and access –Construct modularly –Assemble over time, not all at once –Upgrade parts without disruption of the whole –Use broadly adoptable standards and protocols

Germany, April 2004Digital Partnerships at LC20 NDIIPP Preservation Architecture People Above Institutions In Between Bits Below

Germany, April 2004Digital Partnerships at LC21

Germany, April 2004Digital Partnerships at LC22 Archive Ingest and Handling Test Identify and document issues associated with ingest of heterogeneous set of digital content Testers are cultural heritage institutions with digital preservation capabilities Each to work with same test data set: GMU 9/11 Archive –12gb with 57,000 objects & associated metadata –HTML, graphics, video, sound, PDF, Word, ?

Germany, April 2004Digital Partnerships at LC23 AIHT (cont.) Over 1 year, testers to: –Measure and document all ingest processes –Report on steps taken to preserve data integrity/document logical integrity –Detail complete backup and restore –Describe efforts needed to export test set to another institution for ingest Aim is to refine architecture, identify best practices

Germany, April 2004Digital Partnerships at LC24 NDIIPP Focus Areas Network of preservation partners Preservation architecture Digital preservation research

Germany, April 2004Digital Partnerships at LC25 Research Program Goal is a digital preservation research grants program administered by NSF Agenda shaped by It’s About Time report Looking to fund cutting edge research to address major needs Expect call for proposals within the next several months

Germany, April 2004Digital Partnerships at LC26 Parallel Approaches to Digital Preservation Global –Develop community-accepted standards and best practices for broad use –Build distributed tools and solutions across organizational boundaries Local –Establish organizational policies for creating, maintaining, and selecting/disposing digital objects –Implement specific approaches to formats, metadata, storage, and long-term accessibility

Germany, April 2004Digital Partnerships at LC27 Global Examples Open Archival Information System (OAIS) – UK Digital Preservation Coalition – Metadata Encoding and Transfer Standard (METS) – PDF/A – LOCKSS –

Germany, April 2004Digital Partnerships at LC28 Local Examples OCLC Digital Archive – National Library of the Netherlands e-Depot – UK Public Records Office – Victorian Electronic Records Strategy – NARA Electronic Records Archives –

Germany, April 2004Digital Partnerships at LC29 Recap: Collaboration is Key Issues relating too are too big, too complex for one institution to handle alone A network of partners working together to manage and preserve content is essential Applies to LC internal, external activities

Germany, April 2004Digital Partnerships at LC30 For More Information memory.loc.gov/ammem/techdocs –Technical info on building digital collections –Current Information about NDIIPP –Publications, including Preserving Our Digital Heritage and It’s About Time William G. LeFurgy –(202)