Al Cornish, Systems Librarian Washington State University Libraries Preserving Access to Multimedia Collections

Preservation example – Early Washington Maps Collection

Bit preservation of Master TIFF files:  Online storage (RAID array, with scheduled backups)  Optical media storage (CD-R, DVD-R)  Considering outsourcing options

Preservation support – Networking The three contributing Early Washington Maps collection libraries (University of Washington, Washington State University, Tacoma Public Library) are actively working with the National Geospatial Digital Archive (NGDA, URL to support collection preservation.

Preservation support – Networking The National Geospatial Digital Archive (NGDA) is one of eight projects funded through the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP, URL The NGDA host institutions are Stanford University and the University of California-Santa Barbara.

Preservation support – Networking Early Washington Maps content will be contributed to the NGDA repository. Some issues to be resolved:  NGDA will develop technical specifications for content.  Agreements between host and contributing institutions.

Example: OCLC/DiMeMa CONTENTdm’s Full Resolution capability  Assists with the storage and archiving of full resolution files.  Formats supported include TIFF and MrSID; JPEG2000 support also available in CONTENTdm. Preservation support - Software

“Preservation is a collection management, or digital life cycle management, activity with a technology component but also associated policies and procedures.” Mackenzie Smith, “Exploring Variety in Digital Collections…”, Library Trends, Summer 2005 The Preservation Task

Preservation example – WSU Oral History Project Public web site using CONTENTdm (URL Content includes described, streamed audio files in RealAudio format; use of SMIL technology to create synchronized audio/transcript display WAV format files serve as the preservation master