Category: Digital Curation & Digital Preservation

Audit and Certification of Trustworthy Digital Repositories

The Council of the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) has released Audit and Certification of Trustworthy Digital Repositories, which is a recommended practice.

Here's an excerpt:

In 2002, Research Libraries Group (RLG) and Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) jointly published Trusted Digital Repositories: Attributes and Responsibilities (reference [B2]), which further articulated a framework of attributes and responsibilities for trusted, reliable, sustainable digital repositories capable of handling the range of materials held by large and small cultural heritage and research institutions. . . . .

OAIS included a Roadmap for follow-on standards which included 'standard(s) for accreditation of archives'. It was agreed that RLG and National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) would take this particular topic forward and the later published the TRAC (reference [B3]) document which combined ideas from OAIS (reference [1]) and Trusted Digital Repositories: Attributes and Responsibilities (TDR—reference [B2]).

The current document follows on from TRAC in order to produce an ISO standard.

| Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

Digital Curation LinkedIn Group Launched

An open Digital Curation LinkedIn group has been established. (You can also find the group by searching for "digital curation" in the LinkedIn group search function.)

The group's description follows:

In a rapidly changing technological environment, the difficult task of ensuring effective long-term access to digital information is increasingly important. This group discusses digital curation, which the Digital Curation Centre defines as "maintaining, preserving and adding value to digital research data throughout its lifecycle." The DCC's digital curation lifecycle model includes these steps: conceptualise, create, access and use, appraise and select, dispose, ingest, preservation action, reappraise, store, access and reuse, and transform.

| Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

Notes of the HathiTrust Constitutional Convention October 8-9, 2011

HathiTrust has released Notes of the HathiTrust Constitutional Convention October 8-9, 2011.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

As a result of these proceedings, HathiTrust:

  • Will establish a governance structure consisting of a Board, a Board Executive Committee, and Board-appointed committees, and will articulate bylaws
  • Will formalize a transparent process for inviting, evaluating, ranking, launching and assessing development initiatives
  • Will establish a shared print monograph archiving program among the member libraries
  • Will expand and enhance access to U.S. federal publications including those issued by GPO and other federal agencies
  • Will develop and vet a fee-for-service model to allow contribution of content from non-partner entities

| Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

A Study of Embedded Metadata Support in Audio Recording Software: Summary of Findings and Conclusions

The Association for Recorded Sound Collections has released A Study of Embedded Metadata Support in Audio Recording Software: Summary of Findings and Conclusions.

Here's an excerpt:

In 2010, the ARSC Technical Committee (TC) completed a study of support for embedded metadata within and across a variety of audio recording software applications. The study was coordinated, and much of it carried out, by AudioVisual Preservation Solutions. This work addressed two primary questions: How well does embedded metadata persist, and is its integrity maintained, within any given file as it is handled by various applications over time? How well is embedded metadata handled during the process of creating a derivative?

| Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

European Commission Issues "Recommendation on the Digitisation and Online Accessibility of Cultural Material and Digital Preservation"

The European Commission has issued a "Recommendation on the Digitisation and Online Accessibility of Cultural Material and Digital Preservation."

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

In particular, the Recommendation invites Member States to:

  • put in place solid plans for their investments in digitisation and foster public-private partnerships to share the gigantic cost of digitisation (recently estimated at 100 billion EUR). The Recommendation spells out key principles to ensure that such partnerships are fair and balanced.
  • make available through Europeana 30 million objects by 2015, including all Europe's masterpieces which are no longer protected by copyright, and all material digitised with public funding.
  • get more in-copyright material online, by, for example, creating the legal framework conditions enabling large-scale digitisation and cross-border accessibility of out-of-commerce works.
  • reinforce their strategies and adapt their legislation to ensure long-term preservation of digital material, by, for example, ensuring the material deposited is not protected by technical measures that impede librarians from preserving it.

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

Data Management Planning: Open Source DMPTool Launched by University of California Curation Center and Others

The University of California Curation Center has announced the launch of DMPTool.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The University of California and several other major research institutions have partnered to develop the DMPTool, a flexible online application to help researchers generate data management plans—simple but effective documents for ensuring good data stewardship. These plans increasingly are being required by funders such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (GBMF). The DMPTool supports data management plans and funder requirements across the disciplines, including the humanities and physical, medical and social sciences. . . .

The DMPTool is open source, freely available and easily configurable to reflect an institution's local policies and information. Users of the DMPTool can view sample plans, preview funder requirements and view the latest changes to their plans. It permits the user to create an editable document for submission to a funding agency and can accommodate different versions as funding requirements change. Not only can researchers use the tool to generate plans compliant to funder requirements, but institutions also can use the tool to present information and policies relevant to data management and to foster collaboration among faculty, the institutional libraries, contracts and grants offices, and academic computing. . . .

Project partners include the University of California Curation Center (UC3) at the California Digital Library, the UCLA Library, the UC San Diego Libraries, the Smithsonian Institution, the University of Virginia Library, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, DataONE, and the United Kingdom's Digital Curation Centre. Working collaboratively, these institutions have consolidated their expertise and reduced their costs.

| Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

"Federal Funding Agencies: Data Management and Sharing Policies"

The California Digital Library has released "Federal Funding Agencies: Data Management and Sharing Policies."

Here's an excerpt:

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-110 provides the federal administrative requirements for grants and agreements with institutions of higher education, hospitals and other non-profit organizations. In 1999 Circular A-110 was revised to provide public access under some circumstances to research data through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Funding agencies have implemented the OMB requirement in various ways. The table below summarizes the data management and sharing requirements of primary US federal funding agencies.

| Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

Digital Preservation, SPEC Kit 325

The Association of Research Libraries has released Digital Preservation, SPEC Kit 325. The table of contents and executive summary are freely available.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The survey asked ARL libraries about their digital content, their strategies for preserving that content, and the staff, time, and funding they currently devote to digital preservation. It also asked each responding library to compare its digital preservation activities of three years ago to current activities and project three years into the future. In addition, to better understand the roles of research libraries in the emergent field of digital curation, the survey sought to identify issues that are and are not being addressed through current practices and policies.

This survey revealed, as the digital preservation field is maturing, that most ARL libraries are rising to the challenge of establishing policies, workflows, and infrastructures to systematically preserve their rapidly expanding bodies of digital content. The survey also revealed that most ARL libraries are actively engaging in in-house digital preservation rather than outsourcing it to external parties, thus maintaining their control and ownership over the digital content that they curate.

| Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

Open Online Research Data Management Course for Ph.D Students

The Research Data MANTRA project has released a freely available online research data management course for Ph.D students. The course is under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 UK: Scotland License.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement :

The JISC-funded Research Data MANTRA project has produced a course for postgraduate students and early career researchers who work with data and would like to learn more about how to manage it effectively. Course content is geared towards the geosciences, social and political sciences and clinical psychology; however, many of the issues covered apply equally to all research disciplines.

| Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

"HathiTrust’s Past, Present, and Future"

The HathiTrust has released "HathiTrust's Past, Present, and Future" by John Wilkin.

Here's an excerpt:

My plan today is to talk about HathiTrust's past, present and future. Don't worry—I won't do a history of HathiTrust. My discussion of the "past" will be primarily about the organization's early accomplishments, and begins with a review of our Short- and Long-Term Functional Objects. I'll then talk briefly about a few things in the HathiTrust pipeline, and finally conclude with an overview of some of the larger changes that have taken place since 2008. A point I'd like to emphasize now and throughout is that this is a "libraries writ large" success story. What has happened is something that we accomplished collectively. This is not a story of an external organization—Google, a government agency, or some external champion—doing something for us. This is our story, and one that we need to understand and celebrate.

| Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

Investigations on Storage and Versioning of Digital Objects

The Stanford Digital Repository has released four short reports on "open source storage solutions that include the ability to efficiently and securely preserve multiple-version digital objects which contain large binary files."

| Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

"Digital Curation:The Emergence of a New Discipline"

Sarah Higgins has published "Digital Curation:The Emergence of a New Discipline" in the latest issue of the International Journal of Digital Curation.

Here's an excerpt:

In the mid 1990s UK digital preservation activity concentrated on ensuring the survival of digital material—spurred on by the US report Preserving Digital Information (The Task Force on Archiving of Digital Information, 1996) and developed through JISC-funded activities. Technical developments and a maturing understanding of organisational activity and workflow saw the emphasis move to ensuring the access, use and reuse of digital materials throughout their lifecycle. Digital Curation emerged as a new discipline supported through the activities of the UK's Digital Curation Centre and a number of EU 6th Framework Projects. Digital Curation is now embedded in both practice and research; with the development of tools, and the foundation of a number of support units and academic educators offering training and furthering research. The International

| Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

"Extracting, Transforming and Archiving Scientific Data"

Daniel Lemire and Andre Vellin have self-archived "Extracting, Transforming and Archiving Scientific Data" in arXiv.org.

Here's an excerpt:

It is becoming common to archive research datasets that are not only large but also numerous. In addition, their corresponding metadata and the software required to analyse or display them need to be archived. Yet the manual curation of research data can be difficult and expensive, particularly in very large digital repositories, hence the importance of models and tools for automating digital curation tasks. The automation of these tasks faces three major challenges: (1) research data and data sources are highly heterogeneous, (2) future research needs are difficult to anticipate, (3) data is hard to index. To address these problems, we propose the Extract, Transform and Archive (ETA) model for managing and mechanizing the curation of research data. Specifically, we propose a scalable strategy for addressing the research-data problem, ranging from the extraction of legacy data to its long-term storage. We review some existing solutions and propose novel avenues of research.

| Digital Scholarship |

University of North Texas Receives over $800,000 in Two Grants Related to Digital Data Curation

The University of North Texas has received over $800,000 in two Institute of Museum and Library Services grants related to digital data curation.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The University of North Texas Libraries and UNT's College of Information have received more than $800,000 in grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to address the challenges of curating and preserving digital information and new requirements from the National Science Foundation and other agencies that fund university research on long-term management of research data for possible review and use by future researchers and scholars.

Dr. William Moen, associate dean for research in UNT's College of Information, and Dr. Martin Halbert, dean of the UNT Libraries, successfully applied for two grants from IMLS' Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program, which supports efforts to recruit and educate the next generation of librarians and faculty members who prepare them for future careers, as well as supporting research related to library education and staffing needs, curriculum development and continuing education and training. . . .

The first grant of $624,663 from IMLS is for a three-year project to create four graduate-level courses in digital curation and data management. The first two courses will be taught during the summer of 2012. All four courses will be taught beginning in the summer of 2013, said Moen, the principal investigator for the grant. . . .

The second IMLS grant of $226,786 will fund a two-year investigation of the new roles, knowledge and skills that will be required of library and information science professionals to successfully manage research data cited in articles in scholarly journals — not just the publications.

UNT researchers, led by Halbert, will conduct two national surveys of officials at NSF and other funding agencies; college and university vice presidents for research and campus research officers; faculty of library and information science programs; academic librarians; campus IT managers; provosts and chief academic officers; and key researchers at universities and publishers of faculty research. The surveys will focus on college and universities' current data management plans, policies and practices; expectations and beliefs about data management; and preparation needed to archive data.

During the two years of the project, UNT researchers will also conduct focus groups in conjunction with several professional meetings. Personal interviews will be scheduled with selected individuals from the focus groups.

Read more about it at "Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program Grant Announcement June 2011."

| Digital Scholarship |

E-Journal Archiving for UK HE Libraries—White Paper (Final)

JISC has released E-Journal Archiving for UK HE Libraries—White Paper (Final).

Here's an excerpt:

The aim of this white paper is to help universities and libraries implement policies and procedures in relation to e-journal archiving which can help support the move towards e-only provision of scholarly journals across the HE sector. The white paper is also contributing to complementary work JISC and other funders are commissioning on moving towards e-only provision of Journals.

| Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 | Institutional Repository Bibliography | Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 |

European Commission Launches Public Consultation on Digital Scientific Information Access and Preservation

The European Commission has launched a public consultation on digital scientific information access and preservation.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

A public consultation on access to, and preservation of, digital scientific information has been launched by the European Commission on the initiative of European Commission Vice President for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes and Commissioner for Research and Innovation, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn. European researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs must have easy and fast access to scientific information, to compete on an equal footing with their counterparts across the world. Modern digital infrastructures can play a key role in facilitating access. However, a number of challenges remain, such as high and rising subscription prices to scientific publications, an ever-growing volume of scientific data, and the need to select, curate and preserve research outputs. Open access, defined as free access to scholarly content over the Internet, can help address this. Scientists, research funding organisations, universities, and other interested parties are invited to send their contributions on how to improve access to scientific information. The consultation will run until 9 September 2011. . . .

Interested parties are invited to express their views on the following key science policy questions:

  • how scientific articles could become more accessible to researchers and society at large
  • how research data can be made widely available and how it could be re-used
  • how permanent access to digital content can be ensured and what barriers are preventing the preservation of scientific output

| Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 | Electronic Theses and Dissertations Bibliography | Google Books Bibliography | Institutional Repository Bibliography | Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

Setting Institutional Repositories on the Path to Digital Preservation: Final Project Report from the JISC KeepIt Project

JISC has released Setting Institutional Repositories on the Path to Digital Preservation: Final Project Report from the JISC KeepIt Project.

Here's an excerpt:

Digital preservation starts with detailed knowledge and awareness of your own content. The scope for content of institutional repositories has grown from research papers to presenting data supporting the research, also covering teaching materials, and artistic creativity. Four repositories representing each content type—the exemplars—joined the KeepIt project to investigate how effectively each could support the goals of a general repository: trustworthy storage, and preservation. This final report from the project reveals the results, outcomes and implications of the work.

| Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 | Institutional Repository Bibliography | Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 |

Research on Digital Preservation within Projects Co-Funded by the European Union in the ICT Programme

The European Commission has released Research on Digital Preservation within Projects Co-Funded by the European Union in the ICT Programme.

Here's an excerpt:

This report gives an overview about research on digital preservation throughout projects sponsored by the European Commission as part of the sixth and seventh framework programmes for research and technological development. It summarises the objectives, developments, similarities and differences as well as accomplishments and results of these projects. The report also considers research agendas in the field of digital preservation and identifies challenges for the future.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 |

"The Application of File Identification, Validation, and Characterization Tools in Digital Curation"

Kevin M. Ford has self-archived his M.S. theses, "The Application of File Identification, Validation, and Characterization Tools in Digital Curation," in IDEALS.

Here's an excerpt:

File format identification, characterization, and validation are considered essential processes for digital preservation and, by extension, long-term data curation. These actions are performed on data objects by humans or computers, in an attempt to identify the type of a given file, derive characterizing information that is specific to the file, and validate that the given file conforms to its type specification. The present research reviews the literature surrounding these digital preservation activities, including their theoretical basis and the publications that accompanied the formal release of tools and services designed in response to their theoretical foundation. It also reports the results from extensive tests designed to evaluate the coverage of some of the software tools developed to perform file format identification, characterization, and validation actions. Tests of these tools demonstrate that more work is needed – particularly in terms of scalable solutions – to address the expanse of digital data to be preserved and curated. The breadth of file types these tools are anticipated to handle is so great as to call into question whether a scalable solution is feasible, and, more broadly, whether such efforts will offer a meaningful return on investment. Also, these tools, which serve to provide a type of baseline reading of a file in a repository, can be easily tricked. It is possible to generate files with nothing more than a proper file extension and correct magic number and have the tools "positively" identify the file. This is not the same as a file that conforms to its specification, and one that could be considered valid. The ability to manipulate the results returned by these tools raises issues of identity, trust, security and risk.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 |

Preserving Your Personal Digital Memories Webinar Released

The National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program and the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services have released a webinar on Preserving Your Personal Digital Memories. (Note that the gotowebinar codec is required.)

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Many people want to keep their digital photographs, videos and other files as long-term personal and family memories. This is a fairly new challenge, as until recently most personal documentation was in a hard copy or other analog format. . . .

NDIIPP staff member Bill LeFurgy drew from the program's personal digital archiving guidance in providing practical tips for identifying, selecting, organizing and storing personal digital collections. Over 500 organizations and individuals participated in the webinar, which was held as part of national Preservation Week.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 |

Managing and Sharing Data: Best Practice for Researchers

The UK Data Archive has released a new edition of Managing and Sharing Data: Best Practice for Researchers.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

To support researchers in producing high quality research data for long-term use, the UK Data Archive has revised and expanded its popular and highly cited Managing and Sharing Data: best practice for researchers, first published in 2009.

The new third edition is 36 pages covering:

  • why and how to share research data
  • data management planning and costing
  • documenting data
  • formatting data
  • storing data
  • ethics and consent issues
  • data copyright
  • data management strategies for large investments

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 |

Open Data: UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Adopts EPSRC Policy Framework on Research Data

The UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, which is "the main UK government agency for funding research and training in engineering and the physical sciences," has adopted the EPSRC Policy Framework on Research Data.

Here's an excerpt from the document:

This policy framework sets out EPSRC's expectations concerning the management and provision of access to EPSRC-funded research data. EPSRC recognises that a range of institutional policies and practices can satisfy these expectations, and encourages research organisations to develop specific approaches which, while aligned with EPSRC's expectations, are appropriate to their own structures and cultures.

The expectations arise from seven core principles which align with the core RCUK principles on data sharing. Two of the principles are of particular importance: firstly, that publicly funded research data should generally be made as widely and freely available as possible in a timely and responsible manner; and, secondly, that the research process should not be damaged by the inappropriate release of such data.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 |

Preserving News in the Digital Environment: Mapping the Newspaper Industry in Transition

The National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program has released Preserving News in the Digital Environment: Mapping the Newspaper Industry in Transition, which was written by a team from the Center for Research Libraries.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This report provides a vivid glimpse inside the workplaces that produce what – not long ago – we would have called newspapers. As digital news-gathering and production methods proliferate, and as digital avenues for distribution emerge, these workplaces are being transformed in profound ways, with electronic facsimiles and websites (and probably more) overtaking the paper format.

The report is an outgrowth of the Preserving Digital News meeting held at the Library in September 2009, and it features illustrative examples from four American newspapers: The Arizona Republic, Seattle Post-Intelligencer (since 2008, seattlepi.com), Wisconsin State Journal, and The Chicago Tribune. There is additional information pertaining to the work of The New York Times, Investor’s Business Daily, and the Associated Press. Altogether, the report makes it clear that the transition to the digital environment is not a neat, throw-the-switch change.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 |

"Preserving Repository Content: Practical Tools for Repository Managers"

Miggie Pickton, Debra Morris, Stephanie Meece, Simon Coles, and Steve Hitchcock have published "Preserving Repository Content: Practical Tools for Repository Managers" in the latest issue of the Journal of Digital Information.

Here's an excerpt:

The stated aim of many repositories is to provide permanent open access to their content. However, relatively few repositories have implemented practical action plans towards permanence. Repository managers often lack time and confidence to tackle the important but scary problem of preservation.

Written by, and aimed at, repository managers, this paper describes how the JISC-funded KeepIt project has been bringing together existing preservation tools and services with appropriate training and advice to enable repository managers to formulate practical and achievable preservation plans.

Three elements of the KeepIt project are described:

  1. The initial, exploratory phase in which repository managers and a preservation specialist established the current status of each repository and its preservation objectives;
  2. The repository-specific KeepIt preservation training course which covered the organisational and financial framework of repository preservation; metadata; the new preservation tools; and issues of trust between repository, users and services;
  3. The application of tools and lessons learned from the training course to four exemplar repositories and the impact that this has made.

The paper concludes by recommending practical steps that all repository managers may take to ensure their repositories are preservation-ready.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Institutional Repository Bibliography |