1. DIGITAL CURATION: THE LEGAL FRAMEWORK IN SA Graham Dominy National Archivist of South Africa PRESENTATION TO AFRICA DIGITAL CURATION CONFERENCE: CSIR: PRETORIA: 13 FEBRUARY 2008

2. DIGITAL CURATION Digital Curation is about maintaining and adding value to a trusted body of digital information for current and future use This includes all processes of digital archiving and digital preservation Plus all processes needed for good data creation and management

3. WHAT SHOULD BE CURATED/ARCHIVED? Paper-based or electronic: A record exists regardless of format To “archive” [verb] means to preserve the record with long-term, or permanent value Martie Van Deventer talks of 20 years (or more): –that is just when archivists begin and is long, long, after when “techies” – programmers, data-analysts & project-driven researchers end their work

4. THE NATIONAL TENDENCY “For every problem there is a solution which is simple, obvious and wrong” - ALBERT EINSTEIN (Cited in `The Data Curation Continuum) South Africans love creating great big things to co-ordinate to death or digital extinction, but Treloar, et al, argue from experience that monolithic solutions do not work and decentralised, but inter-connected systems are more practical

5. WHERE IS THE PROBLEM: COLLECTIONS OR PLATFORMS? With the datasets, the collections and their metadata? –i.e. the intellectual control over the data With technology; the rapid challenge in hardware and software that makes the systems obsolete within a few years? –i.e. the technical support for the systems

6. METHODOLOGIES OF ARCHIVISTS AND RECORDS MANAGERS Understanding the context of records creation and the standing of the creators – i.e. institutional history or “validation”: –Provenance –Original order –Administrative History –Diplomatics Leads to intellectual control of the record (or dataset)

7. LEGISLATIVE FRAMEWORK: PRIMARY National Archives Act Legal Deposit Act National Library Act Other legislation (institution-specific: HSRC/NRF/CSIR)

8. LEGISLATION: SUBSIDIARY Operational regulatory framework: –Funder – recipient contractual obligations –Institutional policies and operational guidelines –Inter-institutional collaboration agreements –Commercial agreements

9. LEGISLATION: RELATED Electronic Communications Act Financial Intelligence Act Promotion of Access to Information Act Protection of Information Act/Bill (currently implemented through the Minimum Information Security Standards MISS) Copyright Act

10. NATIONAL ARCHIVES ACT National Archives and Records Service Act (No 43 of 1996 as amended) –‘Governmental bodies’ must transfer their records of enduring value to the archives after 20 years –Governmental bodies - broader term than govt dept –include parastatals –Also researchers required to deposit copy of their work with the relevant archives repository

11. LEGAL DEPOSIT ACT Legal Deposit Act (No 54 of 1007) –Any ‘document’ published in South Africa must be deposited in the five legal deposit libraries –The definition of ‘document’ overlaps with the definition of a ‘record’ in the Archives Act –A published work can be in virtually any conceivable format

12. NATIONAL LIBRARY ACT National Library of South Africa Act (No 92 of 1998) –Essentially an enabling act intended to amalgamate the former South African and State Libraries –Operationally it acquires material (‘documents’) in terms of the Legal Deposit Act –However, at least the Library Act cross- references to the Archives Act

13. SUMMARY & CONCLUSION (1) The Australian experiences discussed by Treloar (et al) and Cunningham point in the direction of decentralised digital curation; The British experience discussed by Bailey cautions against a rigid application of archival dogma in a monolithic environment

14. SUMMARY & CONCLUSION (2) The current South African legislative framework, perhaps unintentionally, reinforces these trends and points towards a more decentralised system The challenge is to create and sustain inter-connectivity especially in the light of technological changes These can perhaps best be dealt with in an inter-connected, but decentralised system - we have the legal framework

15. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Mike DE KLERK (HSRC) James DOMINY (NBN) Andrew KANIKI (NRF) Anil SINGH (DAC) Martie VAN DEVENTER (CSIR)

16. REFERENCES Steve BAILEY: ‘Taking the road less travelled by: The future of the archive and records management profession in the digital age’ JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF ARCHIVISTS 28 (2) Oct 2007: 117-124 Adrian CUNNINGHAM: ‘Digital Curation/Digital Archiving: a view from the National Archives of Australia’ Paper for DigCurr 2007 Conference, Chapel Hill, North Carolina No Author: ‘Digital Curation’ WIKIPEDIA Andrew TRELOAR: ‘Supporting the e-Research lifecycle from acquisition through to annotation: the DART/ARCHER experience’ (www.eresearch.edu.au/treloar) www.eresearch.edu.au/treloar Andrew TRELOAR, David GROENEWEGEN & Cathrine HARBOE-REE: ‘The Data Curation Continuum: Managing data objects in institutional repositories’ D-LIB MAGAZINE 13 (9/10) Sept/Oct 2007