Transcript No Slide Title

Digital Preservation Initiatives in
the United States
A Summary
Deanna B. Marcum
Context
• In U.S., preservation traditionally a
distributed activity
• Each library or archives responsible for its
own holdings and for providing services for
its users
Context
• National collection = sum of the individual
activities
Context
• Physical artifacts are assets that belong to
the library or archives
• Information contained in artifacts may or
may not belong to the institution
• Intellectual property rights often stay with
creator
4 Types of activities
• Common
understandings among
stakeholders
• Practical preservation
activity
• Experimental
preservation activity
• Preservation research
Stakeholders with an interest
• Creators
• Publishers
• Archival repositories
All have different interests and
motivations
Each has a stake in long term
preservation
Understandings among
stakeholders
• Selection of single or
standard formats
• Agreements on terms
or conditions for
distribution of
archived information
• What constitutes a
trusted repository
• Open Archival
Information System
(OAIS) as the standard
reference model
4 Commonly understood
technical approaches
• Migration (including technology
preservation)
• Emulation
• Persistent Object Preservation
• Digital Archeology (data mining)
Practical Preservation Activity
• NARA - electronic records
• Commercial publishers - archiving ejournals
• Non-profits - reformatting collections and
building archival repositories
• Service organizations - digital archives for
library community
Practical Preservation Activity
• Data creators and data users combining
efforts to preserve a body of material NLM’s creation of PubMed Central
• Snapshots of the Web - Internet Archive
Experimental Preservation
Activity
• InterPARES - develop theoretical and
methodological knowledge essential for
permanent preservation of records
generated electronically
• NARA - strategic and technical framework
within which it may preserve electronic
records
Experimental Preservation
Activity
• The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation - ejournal archiving project
• Stanford University - LOCKSS software
tools
• IBM Almaden Research Center - universal
virtual machine for digital preservation
Preservation Research
• Architecture and
performance of
archival repositories
• Persistent
identification and
naming of archived
information
• Methods for recording
and ensuring
authenticity of
archived information
• Degradation and
testing of magnetic
and other media
Preservation Research
• Attributes of
preservable digital
information
• Attributes of trusted
archival repositories
• Development of
standards related to
digital archives
• Automatic copying
and distribution of
digital information
• Cornell’s PRISM
Library of Congress
• National Digital Information Infrastructure
Preservation Program (NDIIPP)
Library of Congress
• $100 million in three phases
Library of Congress
• Advisory Committee
• Stakeholder Meetings
• Plan for Congressional approval
LC Learnings
• No single
technological fix
• Include both “born
digital” and “reborn
digital” materials
• Rights to archive;
permission to access
• Who should pay
remains the vexing
question
More research needed
• Architectures for persistent digital
repositories
• Preservation technology and tools
• Attributes of archived collections
• Policy and economic models
Scenario Planning
• What are the possible futures?
• What is the likely future?
• How does LC plan to the future?