The Minnesota Historical Society has released the Report on Digital Preservation and Cloud Services.

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DuraSpace has received a two-year $861,000 grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to develop DuraCloud data services.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Currently, DuraCloud provides a reliable way to preserve and archive research materials in the cloud, a solution developed within the academic community for academic institutions. During the next phase of DuraCloud development, additional applications, features, and services will be built to extend the cloud in order to facilitate data archiving and content management. DuraSpace offers DuraCloud as a software as a service that enables archiving, preserving, and managing institutional content using cloud storage and intends to expand its service offerings in the next phase of development.

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David S. H. Rosenthal and Daniel L. Vargas have self-archived "LOCKSS Boxes in the Cloud" at the LOCKSS website.

Here's an excerpt:

The 30-year history of raw disk costs shows a drop of at least 30% per year. The history of cloud storage costs from commercial providers shows that they drop at most 3% per year. Until there is a radical change in one or other of these cost curves it clear that cloud storage is not even close to cost-competitive with local disk storage for long-term preservation purposes in general, and LOCKSS boxes in particular.

| Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

JISC has released Digital Curation and the Cloud: Final Report. This is a revised version of the draft report that was released earlier this year.

Here's an excerpt:

Digital curation involves a wide range of activities, many of which may be suitable for deployment within a cloud environment. These range from infrequent, resource-intensive tasks which will benefit from the ability to rapidly provision resources, to day-to-day collaborative activities which can be facilitated by networked cloud services. Associated benefits are offset by risks such as loss of data or service level, legal and governance incompatibilities and transfer bottlenecks. There is considerable variability across both risks and benefits according to the service and deployment models being adopted and the context in which activities are performed. Some risks, such as legal liabilities, are mitigated by the use of alternatives, for example, private cloud models, but this is typically at the expense of benefits such as resource elasticity and economies of scale.

| Digital Curation Bibliography: Preservation and Stewardship of Scholarly Works | Digital Scholarship |

James Brewer, Tracy Popp, and Joy Perrin have published "REDDNET and Digital Preservation in the Open Cloud: Research at Texas Tech University Libraries on Long-Term Archival Storage" in the latest issue of the Journal of Digital Information.

Here's an excerpt:

In open cloud systems users can develop their own software and data management, control access, and purchase their own hardware while running securely in the cloud environment. . . . It is in this context that REDDnet (Research and Education Data Depot network) is presented as the place where the Texas Tech University (TTU) Libraries have been conducting research on long-term digital archival storage. The REDDnet network by year's end will be at 1.2 petabytes (PB) with an additional 1.4 PB for a related project. . . additionally there are over 200 TB of tape storage. These numbers exclude any disk space which TTU will be purchasing during the year. National Science Foundation (NSF) funding covering REDDnet and CMS-HI was in excess of $850,000 with $850,000 earmarked toward REDDnet. In the terminology we used above, REDDnet is an open cloud system that invited TTU Libraries to participate. This means that we run software which fits the REDDnet structure. We are beginning to complete the final design of our system, and starting to move into the first stages of construction. And we have made a decision to move forward and purchase one-half petabyte of disk storage in the initial phase. The concerns, deliberations and testing are presented here along with our initial approach.

| Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010: "If you're looking for a reading list that will keep you busy from now until the end of time, this is your one-stop shop for all things digital preservation." — "Digital Preservation Reading List," Preservation Services at Dartmouth College weblog, February 21, 2012. | Digital Scholarship |

Presentations from the Curation in the Cloud Workshop are now available.

Here's an excerpt from the conference web page:

The aim of this 2-day workshop is to assess the potential and practicalities of using cloud-based solutions for the curation and long-term preservation of digital materials, focusing particularly on data that originates from research or that supports research processes. What will particularly be of value is to engage stakeholders from a number of different types and scales of organisations, encompassing those that are able to rely on established and joined-up institutional infrastructures; alongside those who may have more fragmented or immature local measures in place to manage data.

| Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

Brian Aitken, Patrick McCann, Andrew McHugh, Kerry Miller have self-archived "Digital Curation and the Cloud" in Enlighten.

Here's an excerpt:

Digital curation involves a wide range of activities, many of which could benefit from cloud deployment to a greater or lesser extent. These range from infrequent, resource-intensive tasks which benefit from the ability to rapidly provision resources to day-to-day collaborative activities which can be facilitated by networked cloud services. Associated benefits are offset by risks such as loss of data or service level, legal and governance incompatibilities and transfer bottlenecks. There is considerable variability across both risks and benefits according to the service and deployment models being adopted and the context in which activities are performed. Some risks, such as legal liabilities, are mitigated by the use of alternative, e.g., private cloud models, but this is typically at the expense of benefits such as resource elasticity and economies of scale. Infrastructure as a Service model may provide a basis on which more specialised software services may be provided.

| Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

The Archives & Records Association and the Department of Information Studies, Aberystwyth University have released the Cloud Computing Toolkit: Guidance for Outsourcing Information Storage to the Cloud.

Here's an excerpt:

The toolkit covers four main areas that should be considered when an organisation intends to outsource business processes and information storage into a cloud environment and should help develop a consistent cloud computing strategy as well as requirements for the required cloud service. Each of the four main sections proposes questions that should be taken into consideration by the organisation or that should be addressed to the prospective cloud service provider:

• Overview of cloud computing – Cloud computing definition, benefits and challenges
• Preparing for the cloud – Cloud service selection and risk assessment
• Managing the cloud – Information management, compliance, contract and cost
• Operating in the cloud – Information security, access and availability

Read more about it at Storing Information in the Cloud: Project Report.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 |

The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative has released Privacy Considerations in Cloud-Based Teaching and Learning Environments.

Here's an excerpt:

In this white paper, we outline the privacy issues relevant to using cloud-based instructional tools or cloud-based teaching and learning environments for faculty members and those supporting instruction. Our discussion of how teaching and learning in an increasingly technological environment has transformed the way we interact and interpret FERPA will help inform various choices that institutions can consider to best address the law, including policy and best-practice examples. We highlight practical suggestions for how faculty members can continue to use innovative instructional strategies and engage students while considering privacy issues. Finally, this paper discusses ways to further explore and address privacy locally and includes a comprehensive resource list for further reading.

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OCLC has released Cloud-Sourcing Research Collections: Managing Print in the Mass-Digitized Library Environment.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The objective of the project was to examine the feasibility of outsourcing management of low-use print books held in academic libraries to shared service providers, including large-scale print and digital repositories. The study assessed the opportunity for library space saving and cost avoidance through the systematic and intentional outsourcing of local management operations for digitized books to shared service providers and progressive downsizing of local print collections in favor of negotiated access to the digitized corpus and regionally consolidated print inventory.

Some of the findings from the project that are detailed in the report include:

• There is sufficient material in the mass-digitized library collection managed by the HathiTrust to duplicate a sizeable (and growing) portion of virtually any academic library in the United States, and there is adequate duplication between the shared digital repository and large-scale print storage facilities to enable a great number of academic libraries to reconsider their local print management operations.
• The combination of a relatively small number of potential shared print providers, including the US Library of Congress, was sufficient to achieve more than 70% coverage of the digitized book collection, suggesting that shared service may not require a very large network of providers.
• Substantial library space savings and cost avoidance could be achieved if academic institutions outsourced management of redundant low-use inventory to shared service providers.
• Academic library directors can have a positive and profound impact on the future of academic print collections by adopting and implementing a deliberate strategy to build and sustain regional print service centers that can reduce the total cost of library preservation and access.

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TierraCloud has launched the HC2 Open Source Project. HC2 has a Fedora Repository plug-in.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Web2.0s have invented a new storage architecture that runs on industry standard x86 servers using sophisticated software to create extremely reliable and scalable storage systems. This architecture, that may be called Private Cloud Storage, is so compelling that enterprises will have no option but to use it. Although enterprise storage architectures have been fairly stable since the mid 80’s with external block and file storage, TierraCloud expects these architectures will undergo a sea-change in the next decade.

"Current mainstream solutions are ill-suited to address new private cloud storage requirements" said Sriram Rupanagunta, founder of TierraCloud. "Acquisition cost, management cost, scalability and reliability are the key requirements. With HC2’s unique advantages in the areas of automated data management, extreme data mobility, and ability to run third-party storage apps, the total-cost-of-ownership will get slashed by 10x." . . .

"It has become clear that data curation will require distributed storage and application frameworks," said Sayeed Choudhury, Associate Dean of University Libraries at Johns Hopkins University. "No single institution can develop the comprehensive, necessary infrastructure to preserve and provide access to the large amount of data being generated by all disciplines ranging from the sciences to the humanities. HC2's emphasis on hardware choices, geographically distributed data and open-source software is compelling. Most institutions will be eager to experiment with private cloud storage and HC2 represents a useful option in this regard."

EDUCAUSE Quarterly has published a special issue on cloud computing.

Here are some representative articles:

• "Cloud Computing Explained"
• "Embracing the Cloud: Six Ways to Look at the Shift to Cloud Computing"
• "A Tale of Two Clouds"
• "Demystifying the Cloud: Implications for IT Funding in Higher Education"
• "If It's in the Cloud, Get It on Paper: Cloud Computing Contract Issues"
• "Using Cloud Infrastructure as Part of a Digital Preservation Strategy with DuraCloud"