1. CASPAR
Cultural, Artistic and Scientific knowledge for Preservation Access and Retrieval

2. WHAT:objectives (from the call)
Develop systems and tools which will support the accessibility and use over time of digital cultural and scientific resources.
Explore how to preserve the availability and authenticity of digital resources over time
Support emerging complexity of scientific, cultural and creative objects and associated repositories

3. Objectives
Objective 1: to lay the foundation for all future preservation activities (CASPAR methodology)
Objective 2: to create key advanced components to use in all the preservation activities (CASPAR components)
Objective 3: to create the long-term autonomous system to support all the preservation activities (CASPAR framework)
Objective 4: to demonstrate the validity of the CASPAR framework with heterogeneous data and a variety of innovative applications (CASPAR testbeds)
In addition to these fundamental objectives, CASPAR offers supporting activities in order to guarantee the successful execution of the project results even after the end of the project and the re-usability of outcomes in a wider domain than the testbed-related sectors:
Objective 5: to build up the CASPAR preservation user community in order to create consensus around the initiative and gather a critical mass of potential users/customers
Objective 6: to create a self-sustainable model for the CASPAR process and offer supporting activities in order to promote the successful exploitation of the project results after the end of the project.

4. WHAT: vision
CASPAR manages knowledge to keep archives alive through time:
Preserve information & knowledge – not just “the bits”
Preservation is a process, not a one-shot event
transforming content (migration, emulation, etc.) to adapt it to new constraints of rendition and playability
and
enriching content to preserve its intelligibility and (re)usability (not just rendering)
OAIS provides a general framework:
current implementations deal more with format than the interpretation of data
CASPAR proposes a richer implementation for dealing with content interpretation

5. WHAT: expected results
CASPAR approach and framework to support the “end-to-end” lifecycle for scientific, cultural and creative digital resources
Infrastructure
Tools
Techniques
Testbeds: science, culture, artistic to identify and test common infrastructure
Supported by discipline specific access
Embedded in long-lived institutions

6. must be relatively easy to use
must have a low “buy-in” in terms of effort required to adopt the CASPAR paradigm
must avoid requiring wholesale change of everyone else’s systems
must be decentralised and reproducible so that it can live on after the formal end of the CASPAR project.

7. FOR WHOM Potential USERS: Creators of the resources
Funders of the resources and their preservation
Curators of the resources
Suppliers of preservation-related services
Users of the information

8. ...for WHOM Large users communities involved with Science: Culture
European Space Agency
CCLRC
Culture
UNESCO
Artistic
INA, IRCAM, CIANT …
Creators
Funders
Curators
Suppliers
End-users

9. .......for WHOM Multi-Industry perspectives Software Hardware
Middleware

10. HOW: Foundations of Preservation approach
OAIS Reference Model
OAIS related stds work:
Producer-Archive interface
NARA/RLG Audit & Certification draft – now released for testing and comment
SIP, XFDU….others
OAIS based projects
InterPARES
….many others

11. HOW: Implementation plan structure (blocks of work)

12. HOW (cont’d): S&T approach
Component-based research
OAIS-based components
e.g. Storage
OAIS-based extensions
Next generation components
Focused research & testbeds: vertical threads

13. HOW (cont’s): OAIS extensions
Knowledge driven approach
Knowledge management to support long-term preservation of concepts/information:
Single, complex, on demand, interactive objects
DRM
Authenticity
Access
Storage

14. Framework
Integrated Framework: supports the development of the three vertical testbeds
Component-based research Open standards & Open Source development methodology
Framework: integration of research components with existing off-the-shelf/modifiable-off-the-shelf components
Service Oriented Architecture for service delivery
Process control and composition

15. CASPAR Testbeds Three testbeds: Cultural, Performing Arts, Scientific
Cultural <- UNESCO
Peforming Arts <- INA , IRCAM
Scientific <- ESA (with CCLRC)
Complex, multi-source, multifaceted data
Specific requirements on preservation (technical, delivery, legal)
Specific research issues: as matter of facts, they represents three focused research streams
Identifying and confirming common infrastructure elements

16. CASPAR testbeds: Testing and Validation
Common design & validation methodology
Uniform evaluation parameters
Each testbed has its own user communities
Continuous feeding to the Project Performance Evaluation process

18. CASPAR Integrated architecture

19. CCLRC Infrastructure Build-up
FP7 projects
Other CCLRC projects
CCLRC Curation Facility
European Preservation Infrastructure
Alliance
CASPAR
Other CCLRC projects
Other Alliance Members e.g. ESA
Future Alliance Members

20. Registries

21. UK DCC Organisation communities of practice: users Industry
curation organisations eg DPC
community support & outreach
Collaborative Associates Network of Data
Organisations
service definition & delivery
management & admin support
research collaborators
research
development co-ordination
testbeds & tools
Industry
standards bodies

22. DCC Registry

23. Sharing RepInfo RepInfo is needed RepInfo is extensive
May need to “extend” RepInfo as Designated Community and/or its knowledgebase changes
How can we avoid every Repository repeating the work
Need to control costs
Need to share the effort

24. Requirements
Data users - need to be able to obtain pre-identified RepInfo
Curators: need to be able to find suitable pre-existing RepInfo to re-use Or
Create RepInfo

25. Registry for Representation Info
The Digital Object could have RepInfo packed with it
Support automated access & processing
Example of use of Representation Information Labelling

26. Use of RepInfo
CPID
CPID
Structure = CPID
Semantics = CPID
Rendering s/w = CPID
Each “bag of bits” has an associated pointer (CPID) to a Label
Structure = CPID
Semantics = CPID
Rendering s/w = CPID
CPID
Structure = CPID
Semantics = CPID
Rendering s/w = CPID
Registry
External

27. Registry Interface Requirements
Give it an identifier, give me back something (e.g. RepInfo)
Allow me to search for RepInfo
Interoperable with other (format) registries
Not limited to single protocols

28. Registry API
API allows applications to talk to many different implementations

29. API

30. ebXML Registry Version 3.0: Simplified View of Architecture
Source: ebXML Registry Services and Protocols Committee Draft, 10 February 2005

31. Labels and CPIDs

32. Example RepInfo Label
A Label is itself RepInfo. It provides a way to collect together in a sensible way lots of individual pieces of RepInfo

33. Re-using RepInfo
Existing RepInfo can be used to build up further RepInfo
E.g. refer to existing RepInfo in labels

34. Versioning and LID Each object has a unique identifier
Versions of an object share a “logical ID” (LID)
Simply using the LID gives the latest version
Can specify a particular version

35. Clients DCC Registry: Any Registry Web browser
Thick client (
Any Registry
Applications using API

36. GUI access to Registry

37. Classifications
Many Classification Schemes
Help to find RepInfo

38. Initial RepInfo Simple text PDF, Word(!) FITS format
ASCII
Unicode
UTF7/8
PDF, Word(!)
FITS format
FITS standard dictionaries
Things that are “MISSING”

39. RepInfo entry
Simple command line tool

40. Creating Repinfo
There are many tools which can be used to create RepInfo:
Simple text editor to create text describing the data
Complex tools to capture data description e.g.
EAST (see next slides)
DFDL etc
Programming languages of various sorts

41. EAST descriptions

42. OASIS tool for creating EAST descriptions
Snapshot d ’écran OASIS

43. Example of EAST description

44. Using RepInfo A pointer to RepInfo can be attached to data
The RepInfo can be used to
Display
Examine
Process
Re-use
the data

45. Example of use of RepInfo
Laser facility produces Binary data normally used by proprietary software
Describe using EAST data description language
Use in generic application (shown here) to display/process

46. Simple Buy-In Need to add RepInfo to your Data Objects?
Does the RepInfo already exist?
Yes: get its ID and put that in a label
No: register what you have – be assigned an ID.
Add more details later when needed
Or others can add more details

47. Operating Registries
See