Sustainable models for digital preservation Adam Farquhar The British Library Sustainability Models for Digital Preservation, Brussels, Nov, 2007

2 Outline of presentation  Motivation for workshop  Brief introduction to Planets  Typical preservation scenarios  Planets outputs  What might the market look like  Types of models – you will do better!

3 Motivation: Project and funding cycle Gather requirements Scope activity Develop pilot demonstrate Transition to product or service Learn from experience Strategy Tech. change Org. needs Consumer needs Sustained Products Tools Services

4 Motivation: Do better!  Need is generic  All successful funded projects have it  Track record is mixed  Many projects end with a report filed on a shelf  Project participants have limited experience  Rarely have connections with VC or other investment resources  Rarely have skills in market and revenue development!  Goal of workshop:  Bring together a broader range of experience  Expand thinking beyond the obvious models  Identify success criteria  Narrow thinking to likely candidates  Identify what works for Planets

5 Plantes overview  A 4-year research and technology development project co-funded by the European Union to address core digital preservation challenges  Started June 2006 with €15m budget  Coordinated by the British Library  Involves 16 partners including national libraries and archives, leading technology companies and research universities  Builds on strong digital archiving and preservation programmes  Focuses on the needs of libraries and archives  But underlying technology is domain neutral

6 Aims and objectives  Increase Europe’s ability to ensure long-term access to its cultural and scientific heritage  Improve decision-making about long term preservation  Ensure long-term access to valued digital content  Control the costs of preservation actions through increased automation, scaleable infrastructure  Ensure wide adoption across the user community and establish market place for preservation services and tools  Basic assumptions:  Digital material has real long-term value  Technology change makes digital material increasingly difficult to access  New digital preservation technology can reduce costs and unlock access to older digital material  Build practical solutions  Integrate existing expertise, designs and tools  Deliver tools and services that can be used in an operational environment

7 Planets partners  The British Library  National Library, Netherlands  Austrian National Library  State and University Library, Denmark  Royal Library, Denmark  National Archives, UK  Swiss Federal Archives  National Archives, Netherlands

8 Planets partners  Tessella Plc  IBM Netherlands  Microsoft Research  Austrian Research Centers GmbH  Hatii at University of Glasgow  University of Freiburg  Technical University of Vienna  University of Cologne

9 Losing digital information hurts everyone  An NHS doctor needs a 1987 clinical study found on Google Scholar She tries to open the ‘dvi’ file, but can’t  A father shows his children the computer game he wrote in school He wrote the game in PDP assembler He stored the program on paper tape  A small business owner wants to market the energy saving device it developed in 1985 She carefully stored all of the files Now she doesn’t have the applications to read the documents, spread-sheets, and CAD drawings The CAD company is long out of business

10 Losing digital information costs opportunity  A university research lab has provided its data, technical reports, software on-line since 1984 and on the web since The professor retires and closes the lab in 2004 A university IP officer wants to defend a patent challenge A biographer wants review the unpublished work A former student wants to revive a line of research The digital files –Some are damaged –Some rely on applications that are out-of-use –Some rely on hardware that is unavailable –Some rely on an environment that no longer exists –Some rely on information that no-one recorded

11 Losing digital information costs money  An oil company collected extensive data for a reservoir and want to exploit it in 2007  All documents and data are held in v1.3 of an integrated management product  They now use v9.0 and can’t read or access it  An oilfield services company collects dipmeter data in the 1970s  Stored on 7-Track tapes  Recorded in optimised formats  Difficult and expensive to repeat measurement data

12 How big is the problem?  Who is touched by digital preservation problems?  Individual consumers  Small and medium sized enterprises  Large corporations  University libraries, faculties, institutes  Publishers  Libraries  Local, regional, national governments  … every person or organisation that keeps digital material for more than 15 years!

13 What’s in it for a National Library?  “Planets will provide the technology component of our digital preservation solution” Richard Boulderstone, BL Director, 15/06/07  Planets will enable us to  Profile our digital collections against our policies  Identify and diagnose problems in our digital collections  Compare different treatment plans  Select and implement treatment for a wide range of problems  Verify that the treatment was successful  Know how solutions work through empirical evidence  and encourage vendors and service providers to provide these capabilities to us

14 Planets architecture Preservation Planning Services Characterisation Services Preservation Action Services Test Bed: evaluation and validation services Interoperability Framework Digital Content Org. Context External Context Technical Environment

15 Planets architecture: key components  Preservation planning  tools and services for formulating and selecting preservation plans  take into account multiple factors  Preservation characterisation  tools and services for automatic analysis of digital objects’ technical and intellectual characteristics  supporting registry of characterisation information  Preservation action  methodology for describing preservation action tools  supporting registry  migration and emulation tools  Testbed  hardware and software environment for evaluation tools and services  assessment of individual tools as well as execution of preservation plans  Interoperability framework  service-oriented architecture  decouples tools from original implementation environment

16 Key outputs  Intellectual property  Software tools  Service definitions  Deployed services  Data  Tools, services, formats, properties, policies  Experience  Case studies, policy and collection profiles  Training programme  Preservation planning  Preservation characterisation  Preservation actions  Quality assurance  Benchmarking  Adaptors for key repositories  Not the repository

17 Some considerations  Organisational structure  Open source  Grant funded  Commercial partnership  Commercial license  Start-up  Organisational type  Hosted service provider  Consultancy  System integrator  Software vendor  Repository vendor  Storage vendor  Reach  National  International  For-profit  Not-for-profit  Revenue source  Government agency  Enterprise  SME  Consumer

18 Conclusion  We need your help  To think outside of the box  To learn what leads to success  To separate the wheat from the chaff  To learn what the next steps are  To improve the way that funded projects transition to a sustainable model