Notes on Ensuring the Longevity of Digital
Documents
on obsolete digital technology could be lost
DD
are not readable without machinery and the "language" might change as
well. Also, data is often "compressed" or encrypted. And software
embeds special info that is only meaningful to that software and often only
that version of the software. "Bootstraps" might be needed
What
to do?
Ongoing
updated efforts--migration but data is often lost or changed
Translating,
but we lose info in that process
copying
extend
the longevity of stystems that read the documents
Create
a standardized format--but even standardized database models have special
features that differentiate them from one another. Moreover, relational
modeling might be replaced by something like object oriented database
Bootstraping
will require annoted notes to explain how the document was created and how to
"read" it
Updated
information from other sources
see
Howard Besser
DPE
Digital presrevation Europe
DELOS
Digital preservation cluster of the DELOS NoE
Digital
curation center
Ross,
S. "Digital Preservation, Archival Science and methodological
foundations" 2012
Ross
argues that not much progress has been made in the last 20 years. This essay
outlines what needs to be done to ensure that materials are preserved over time
Definition
of DL: “the infrastructure, policies and procedures and organizational,
political and economic mechanisms necessary to enable access to and
preservation of digital content” (taken from the National Library of New
Zealand, quoted in Ross, 2012, p. 49)
"one
wonders what the digital analogue of the photograph of the conventional library
will be" (p. 44)
Ross
states that digital preservation is "about maintaining the semantic
meaning of the digital object and its content, about maintaining its provenance
and authenticity, about retaining its 'interrelatedness' and about securing
information about the context of its creation and use" (p. 45)
Libraries
must balance their objectives with their capabilities
Options
include
- retaining the content
- retain the environment and context of creation and use
- reproduce the experience of use to ensure the right semantic representation and information
UNESCO
guidelines for digital heritage (2003) indicate that libraries need to
establish "verisimilitude" (See Lars Calusen 2007)
Ross
notes that access to DL objects is correlated to their recurring use for
"business" purposes and here he defines this as "evidential,
information or commercial" value (p. 46). Objects that go out of use
periodically are subject to benign neglect which is not good for Digital
objects.
Ross
notes that there is not a widespread recognition of and action about
preservation for multiple reasons: lack of organizational strategic plan, no
standardized practices across or within organizations; benefits to such
preservation were not clear to institutions; value of the item did not seem to
be worth preserving; organizations were awaiting technological solutions (p.
47)
Ross
does not feel the library community has stepped up and made this problem widely
known (p. 48) nor has it developed sufficient preservation measures or the data
to help understand the problem
What
makes a good DL?
Good
technology
Organizational
and cultural apparatus that makes the operations work (Ross, 2012, p. 50)
Establish
the trust of the community (Ross, 2012, p. 50)
Ross
argues further that the DL must ensure its users that it will not lose its
content (Ross, 2012, p. 50)
DL
should make it clear “where the digital materials came from, who created them,
why they were created, where they were created, how they were created, how they
came to be deposited, how they were ingested. . . how the digital objects was
maintained” (p. 51). Or to put it another way they need to ensure
"authenticity, integrity, interpretability, and context. . . across
systems, time and context" (p. 55)
Diplomatics
assists in determining a digital object's provenance and that helps to verify
and contextualize the object (p. 52)
Digital
preservation ensures the maintenance of the value of digital objects (p. 53)
ensuring that they are not altered and are complete given that digital objects
are easier to alter. Need a well documented chain of custody
Authenticity
is important. user needs to know the object is authentic and needs to be able
to validate the authenticity on their own with tools provided by the library
(what?). Library should "have documented the process of digital entity
ingest, management and delivery" (p. 54)
Research
in digital preservation needs to increase. Current "artisan"
practices of preservation do not scale. Automated and scalable pracitces need
to be introduced (p. 56)
The
Digital preservation Europe group has identified nine themes to bring digital
preservation in line with those in the analog world (p. 58-59
- Restoration-some computer forensics methods exist but more need to be developed
- Conservation--what needs to be done to ensure that the data will still be accessible far down the road (annotation? metadata? migration?)
- Collection and repository management-how should the collection be constructed and maintained
- preservation as risk management--need to translate the uncertainties invovled in digital preservation into quantifiable risks that can then be managed
- Preserving interpretability and functionality--need to remain semantically meaningful over time, authentic, usable, reliable. How is this to be done?
- collection cohesion and interoperability
- automation in preservation
- preserving the context
- storage technologies and methods
Ross
imagines some kind of testing facility to see what methods will work (p. 59)
Firm
theoretical foundation is necessary for DL (p. 60)
I
just read a very interesting essay about digital preservation that relates at
least in two ways to the discussion of goals and purposes. First, the article
notes that the definition of a DL should include something about preservation.
He offers the following definition of a DL from the National Library of New
Zealand: “the infrastructure, policies and procedures and organizational,
political and economic mechanisms necessary to enable access to and
preservation of digital content” (taken from the National Library of New
Zealand, quoted in Ross, 2012, p. 49). Second, he argues that DL MUST have a
theoretical foundation in order for "research and development in the DL
area" to flourish and to "communicate our cultural and scientific
knowledge" to the future (Ross, 2012, p. 60). Definition and purpose would
certainly be part of a theoretical foundation.
Rothenberg
(1999), after recounting some possible losses of digital data, seems to be
establishing the parameters for thinking about the coming trend of digital
libraries that could be foreseen in 1999. He establishes the nature of the
potential problems: we must have machinery to read digital data AND the
machinery must be standardized so we don't lose data when the machinery
changes. Obviously, the article is dated, but these concerns still seem very
relevant (as evidenced by Hart and Liu, 2003; Ross, 2012). Rothenberg suggests
some solutions going forward: ongoing updating efforts; translating of data
across different programs; copying; extending the longevity of systems that
read the documents; creating a standardized format for preservation; and some
kind of "bootstrapping".
In
the little reading I have done about preservation, the problem of preservation
in the digital library persists. Ross (2012) identifies 9 areas of concern that
the Digital Preservation Europe group has noted (p. 58-59) which include those
Rothenberg forecast but add that preservation also needs to have restoration
strategies and the context of the digital objects needs to be maintained.
The
point raised by Hart and Liu (2003) that most discussion of preservation has
left out the issue of trust between the user and the digital environment adds
another dimension to DL preservation. They state, "Unless people have
sufficient confidence in digital documents, as they have in paper and monetary
currency, they will not trust electronic document management appliances"
(p. 94). Ross (2012) briefly addresses
this, stating that the DL should make it clear “where the digital materials
came from, who created them, why they were created, where they were created,
how they were created, how they came to be deposited, how they were ingested. .
. how the digital objects was maintained” (p. 51). Or to put it another way
they need to ensure "authenticity, integrity, interpretability, and
context. . . across systems, time and context" (p. 55).
Hart
and Liu (2003) and Ross (2012) make it clear that preservation is still an
issue that demands attention and that solutions need to include not only those
noted by Rothenberg but also some way of ensuring institutional trust and
integrity of digital data (which will require some kind of record keeping that
documents the context of and changes in digital documents) and creating some
kind of technical digital restoration strategies.
What
to do?
Ongoing
updated efforts--migration but data is often lost or changed
Translating,
but we lose info in that process
copying
extend
the longevity of stystems that read the documents
Create
a standardized format--but even standardized database models have special
features that differentiate them from one another. Moreover, relational
modeling might be replaced by something like object oriented database
Bootstraping
will require annoted notes to explain how the document was created and how to
"read" it
Hart, P. E., &
Liu, Z. (2003). Trust in the preservation of digital information.
Communications of the ACM,
46(6), 93-97.
Ross, S.
(2012). Digital preservation, archival science and methodological foundations
for digital libraries. New Review of
Information Networking, 17(1), 43-68.
doi:10.1080/13614576.2012.679446
Rothenberg,
J. (1999). Ensuring the longevity of digital information. Council on Library and Information
Resources, , June 16, 2016.
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