JISC/CNI Conference Edinburgh, 26th June 2002 Challenges of Digital Preservation – do we have a road map? Maggie Jones

The Cedars Project w Background to Cedars w Broad conclusions of Cedars w Major project deliverables w What happens next (or another ‘random act of progress’?)

What is the Cedars Project? w CURL Exemplars in Digital Archives w Collaboration between the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Leeds w Funded by JISC as part of eLib Phase 3 w April 1998-March 2002

Why was Cedars funded? w ‘Having caused some of the increasing move of scholarly resources into the digital domain, we felt it was irresponsible to continue to ignore or to sideline preservation issues.’ Chris Rusbridge w Encouraging use of digital technology vs need to provide assurance of reliability

Follett, JISC and eLib w ‘The exploitation of IT is essential to create the effective library service of the future’. Follett Report w JISC ‘promotes the innovative application and use of information systems and information technology in further and higher education across the UK’ w eLib about helping to facilitate a cultural shift

Digital preservation as a strategic priority w Funding Cedars as part of eLib Phase 3 recognised the crucial importance of tackling digital preservation w Emphasis on providing practical support to institutions vs “blue sky” research

Broad conclusions of Cedars w Digital preservation is soluble w Organisational, political, and financial issues are greater barriers than technical w The success of any digital preservation strategy will depend on the creation and maintenance of metadata w The OAIS Reference Model provides a good framework for distributed archiving

Major project deliverables w Re-designed website designed as dissemination as opposed to management tool w Series of Cedars Guides synthesising work of Cedars in five main areas

Preservation metadata w Prepared Cedars specification, based on OAIS model w This has now been incorporated into the work of RLG/OCLC Working Group on Metadata w Cedars Guide to Preservation Metadata ‘regardless of which particular strategy is adopted, long- term preservation will depend upon the generation and maintenance of data that describe the digital information being preserved and enable its interpretation.’

Technical strategies w Combines elements of both migration and emulation w Recommends preserving the original bytestream + detailed technical metadata which will interpret it w Initial metadata creation costs will be high but classes of digital objects will have the same technical metadata - enabling economies of scale

Distributed Archiving Prototype w Prototype based on OAIS w Demonstrated viability of distributed archiving w Need to be able to find the digital object and ensure it can be understood w Need permanent identifier for each resource

IPR w Need to have permission to preserve w Need collaboration between publishers and libraries w Increasing trend towards licensing access vs owning content w Need to separate access from preservation

Collection Management w Critical importance of written and up-to- date collection management policies w Importance of lifecycle management - preservation must be planned for as early as possible it can’t be seen as an isolated activity

Cedars Workshop, February 2002 w Invitation only workshop CURL Librarians Publishers Other key stakeholders w Enabled CURL institutions to learn about the work of Cedars w Facilitated discussion on gaps and priorities

Conclusions of Workshop w Further research is needed w Need to move from projects to implementation w Need to decide roles and responsibilities w Need further work on costs

Implications of work of Cedars 1. For individual institutions: workflows collection management policies roles and responsibilities between institutions within the institution staff training

Implications, continued 2. At the sectoral level: provision of training further research strategic partnerships co-ordination and leadership

Advantages of projects w Projects can provide focussed effort on complex issues w They can help to shorten the learning curve for institutions w They can highlight major issues w They can provide solutions w They can reduce the time needed to plan services

The bad news w Projects come to an end! Dispersal of knowledge and expertise w Danger that work may be duplicated w Danger than momentum will be lost

What happens now? In the UK: w More projects CAMiLEON (JISC/NSF) archiving of e-publications w CURL Board decisions on role of CURL institutions w Research Support Libraries Group (RSLG) strategic importance of digital preservation

Digital Preservation Coalition w 19 members, including CURL w Will play key co-ordinating role w Will oversee publication of synthesis of Cedars Guides w Also has links to important overseas initiatives, e.g. RLG/OCLC, NDIIPP, Mellon projects etc.

Conclusion w Cedars has made a significant contribution to practical aspects of digital preservation w This work now needs to be continued and expanded on, rather than duplicated w There is much work going on globally which can benefit us all