Category: Digital Curation & Digital Preservation

"Digital Data Archives as Knowledge Infrastructures: Mediating Data Sharing and Reuse"

Christine L. Borgman et al. have self-archived "Digital Data Archives as Knowledge Infrastructures: Mediating Data Sharing and Reuse."

Here's an excerpt:

Digital archives are the preferred means for open access to research data. They play essential roles in knowledge infrastructures—robust networks of people, artifacts, and institutions—but little is known about how they mediate information exchange between stakeholders. We open the "black box" of data archives by studying DANS, the Data Archiving and Networked Services institute of The Netherlands, which manages 50+ years of data from the social sciences, humanities, and other domains. Our interviews, weblogs, ethnography, and document analyses reveal that a few large contributors provide a steady flow of content, but most are academic researchers who submit datasets infrequently and often restrict access to their files. Consumers are a diverse group that overlaps minimally with contributors. Archivists devote about half their time to aiding contributors with curation processes and half to assisting consumers. Given the diversity and infrequency of usage, human assistance in curation and search remains essential. DANS' knowledge infrastructure encompasses public and private stakeholders who contribute, consume, harvest, and serve their data—many of whom did not exist at the time the DANS collections originated—reinforcing the need for continuous investment in digital data archives as their communities, technologies, and services evolve.

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"CLOCKSS Formalizes Long-Standing Commitments from Four Leading Universities to Ensure Perpetual Preservation"

CLOCKSS has released "CLOCKSS Formalizes Long-Standing Commitments from Four Leading Universities to Ensure Perpetual Preservation."

Here's an excerpt:

Four of CLOCKSS's twelve library nodes have agreed to continue to preserve the digital content that is preserved in CLOCKSS, if the organization were to cease to exist. In that unlikely event, Stanford Libraries (U.S.), Humboldt University (Germany), the University of Edinburgh (U.K.), and the University of Alberta Libraries (Canada) would take over the responsibility and the organization for running the LOCKSS software across the CLOCKSS content, to continue preservation for the future.

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"Software Curation in Research Libraries: Practice and Promise"

Alexandra Chassanoff et al. have published "Software Curation in Research Libraries: Practice and Promise" in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication.

Here's an excerpt:

INTRODUCTION Research software plays an increasingly vital role in the scholarly record. Academic research libraries are in the early stages of exploring strategies for curating and preserving research software, aiming to facilitate support and services for long-term access and use. DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM In 2016, the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) began offering postdoctoral fellowships in software curation. Four institutions hosted the initial cohort of software curation fellows. This article describes the work activities and research program of the cohort, highlighting the challenges and benefits of doing this exploratory work in research libraries. NEXT STEPS Academic research libraries are poised to play an important role in research and development around robust services for software curation. The next cohort of CLIR fellows is set to begin in fall 2018 and will likely shape and contribute substantially to an emergent research agenda.

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State Archiving in the Digital Era: A Playbook for the Preservation of Electronic Records

The National Association of State Chief Information Officers and the Council of State Archivists have released the State Archiving in the Digital Era: A Playbook for the Preservation of Electronic Records .

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Many states are finding that they are unprepared to deal with the unique management and preservation issues that are related to digital archives. NASCIO, along with CoSA created this playbook for the preservation of state electronic records. This document includes eleven plays that state officials should consider when working together toward the preservation of digital archives.

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"The Cost of Keeping It: Towards Effective Cost-Modeling for Digital Preservation at the University of Maryland"

Kate Dohe and David Durden have self-archived "The Cost of Keeping It: Towards Effective Cost-Modeling for Digital Preservation at the University of Maryland."

Here's an excerpt:

In our library, we are in the early stages of developing a cost model for digital preservation systems loosely aligned to the costs of systems and activities within the NDSA Levels of Digital Preservation framework. This work is intended to articulate the ongoing costs of desirable and essential digital curation activities to digital project stakeholders, as well as administrators–with the ultimate goal of sustainable funding for responsible digital preservation. Our "Digital Preservation Cost Calculator" has been successfully used to estimate project expenditures in preparation for grant applications and philanthropic financing requests. We are exploring prospective features that can transition this tool from a local budgeting tool to a full-fledged digital preservation application. This paper will introduce our use case and requirements, current development challenges, and propose a prospective roadmap and options for community engagement

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"Open Data, Grey Data, and Stewardship: Universities at the Privacy Frontier"

Christine L. Borgman has self-archived "Open Data, Grey Data, and Stewardship: Universities at the Privacy Frontier."

Here's an excerpt:

As universities recognize the inherent value in the data they collect and hold, they encounter unforeseen challenges in stewarding those data in ways that balance accountability, transparency, and protection of privacy, academic freedom, and intellectual property. Two parallel developments in academic data collection are converging: (1) open access requirements, whereby researchers must provide access to their data as a condition of obtaining grant funding or publishing results in journals; and (2) the vast accumulation of 'grey data' about individuals in their daily activities of research, teaching, learning, services, and administration. The boundaries between research and grey data are blurring, making it more difficult to assess the risks and responsibilities associated with any data collection. Many sets of data, both research and grey, fall outside privacy regulations such as HIPAA, FERPA, and PII. Universities are exploiting these data for research, learning analytics, faculty evaluation, strategic decisions, and other sensitive matters. Commercial entities are besieging universities with requests for access to data or for partnerships to mine them. The privacy frontier facing research universities spans open access practices, uses and misuses of data, public records requests, cyber risk, and curating data for privacy protection. This paper explores the competing values inherent in data stewardship and makes recommendations for practice, drawing on the pioneering work of the University of California in privacy and information security, data governance, and cyber risk.

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"Using ORCID, DOI, and Other Open Identifiers in Research Evaluation"

Laurel L. Haak et al. have published "Using ORCID, DOI, and Other Open Identifiers in Research Evaluation" in Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics.

Here's an excerpt:

We describe how identifiers, such as ORCID iDs and DOIs, are being embedded in research workflows across science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics; how this is affecting data availability for evaluation purposes: and provide examples of evaluations that are leveraging identifiers. We also discuss the importance of provenance and preservation in establishing confidence in the reliability and trustworthiness of data and relationships, and in the long-term availability of metadata describing objects and their inter-relationships.

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"Surveying the State of Data Curation: a Review of Policy and Practice in UK HEIs"

Amy Pham has self-archived "Surveying the State of Data Curation: a Review of Policy and Practice in UK HEIs."

Here's an excerpt:

Through a three-part methodology, the dissertation research aimed to provide a clear picture of the current state of data curation in UK HEIs, including adherence to best practices and the existence of provisions for data curation efforts. A survey questionnaire was disseminated as the primary method of data collection, and additional information was gathered through a literature review and an analysis of online resources and institutional policies. Data curation practices were found to be mostly inconsistent with best practices and were largely focused on facilitating access to research data. However, there is an awareness of the underdeveloped areas of data curation, especially preservation, and efforts are being made to improve these areas. Institutional policies were found to be mostly documents that defined roles and responsibilities and provided little guidance for follow-through. The role of researchers was repeatedly emphasized in both policy and practice and was essential in understanding the current state of data curation.

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"Learning to Love Data (Week): Creating Data Services Awareness on Campus"

Katie Wissel and Lisa DeLuca have published "Learning to Love Data (Week): Creating Data Services Awareness on Campus" in College & Research Libraries News.

Here's an excerpt:

In May 2017, The Economist ran a cover story titled "The world's most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data." Given the continued growth in the sourcing, curating, and storing of data for academic research, it seems the academy would agree. In response to this growing need at Seton Hall, a midsized research university, the Seton Hall University (SHU) Libraries conducted an assessment of the current and emerging data requirements of the researchers and students on campus.

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Setting a Foundation for Assessing Content Reuse: A White Paper from the Developing a Framework for Measuring Reuse of Digital Objects Project

Elizabeth Joan Kelly et al. have self-archived "Setting a Foundation for Assessing Content Reuse: A White Paper from the Developing a Framework for Measuring Reuse of Digital Objects Project."

Here's an excerpt:

From July 1, 2017 to June 30, 2018, members of the Content Reuse sub-group of the Digital Library Federation (DLF)’s Assessment Interest Group (AIG) conducted the Developing a Framework for Measuring Reuse of Digital Objects project. It was sponsored by the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), which awarded a National Leadership/National Forum grant to support the completion of this project. This white paper (a) provides a broad overview of the Measuring Reuse project, including background information on the AIG, (b) outlines the methods used by the project team, (c) summarizes results, and (d) discusses potential next steps. It also includes a series of appendices that show project results.

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"Facilitating and Improving Environmental Research Data Repository Interoperability"

Corinna Gries et al. have published "Facilitating and Improving Environmental Research Data Repository Interoperability" in Data Science Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

Environmental research data repositories provide much needed services for data preservation and data dissemination to diverse communities with domain specific or programmatic data needs and standards. Due to independent development these repositories serve their communities well, but were developed with different technologies, data models and using different ontologies. Hence, the effectiveness and efficiency of these services can be vastly improved if repositories work together adhering to a shared community platform that focuses on the implementation of agreed upon standards and best practices for curation and dissemination of data. Such a community platform drives forward the convergence of technologies and practices that will advance cross-domain interoperability. It will also facilitate contributions from investigators through standardized and streamlined workflows and provide increased visibility for the role of data managers and the curation services provided by data repositories, beyond preservation infrastructure. Ten specific suggestions for such standardizations are outlined without any suggestions for priority or technical implementation. Although the recommendations are for repositories to implement, they have been chosen specifically with the data provider/data curator and synthesis scientist in mind.

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Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Software Preservation

ARL has released the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Software Preservation.

Here's an excerpt:

This Code was made by and for the software preservation community, with the help of legal and technical experts. It provides librarians, archivists, curators, and others who work to preserve software with a tool to guide their reasoning about when and how to employ fair use, in the most common situations they currently face. It does not provide shortcuts in the form of prescriptive "guidelines" or rules of thumb. Nor does it seek to address all the possible situations in which software preservation professionals might employ fair use, now or in the future.

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"HydraDAM2: Extending Fedora 4 and Hydra for Media Preservation"

Jon W. Dunn et al. have self-archived "HydraDAM2: Extending Fedora 4 and Hydra for Media Preservation."

Here's an excerpt:

The overarching goal of the HydraDAM2 project, funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities Preservation and Access Research and Development program, was to extend the existing HydraDAM digital asset management system, developed with prior NEH support, to be able to serve as a digital preservation repository for time-based media collections implementable at a wide range of institutions using multiple digital storage strategies. The new open source digital preservation repository system developed as part of the project by partners Indiana University (IU) and WGBH, known as Phydo, is based on the Fedora 4.x digital repository system and Samvera (formerly Hydra) repository application development framework and is intended to support storage and long-term preservation management of audio and video files and their accompanying metadata. This white paper describes the work of the HydraDAM2 project to develop the Phydo system, along with future plans.

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"Portico Places Archive Replica at the National Library of the Netherlands"

Portico has released "Portico Places Archive Replica at the National Library of the Netherlands."

Here's an excerpt:

Portico and the National Library of the Netherlands (Koninklijke Bibliotheek or KB) have partnered to establish an online replica of the Portico archive that will be hosted by the KB. . . .

Portico additionally has a replica of the archive hosted in the U.S, and another in cloud storage. Kate Wittenberg, Managing Director of Portico, said, "We believe that placing a replica of the Portico archive in Europe, hosted by the KB, will provide Portico’s library and publisher supporters around the world with additional assurance of the long-term safeguarding of the content we preserve."

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"Ensuring the Long-Term Accessibility of Creative Content"

Wendi Maloney has published "Ensuring the Long-Term Accessibility of Creative Content" in the Library of Congress Blog.

Here's an excerpt:

Since the first edition of the Recommended Formats Statement came out in 2014, the Library of Congress has been committed to making it as useful as possible to a wide and varied audience. The statement identifies formats, or sets of technical characteristics – such as physical books, digital file types, specific editions or specific metadata elements—that encourage preservation and long-term access for creative works. Recently, the Library released an updated 2018–19 edition of the statement. . . .

To make the statement useful, it has to reflect reality. For example, the 2018-19 edition of the statement emphasizes the benefit of electronic delivery of datasets. Datasets are a rapidly expanding content area that bring unique challenges for large-scale file delivery and repository management. The datasets section of the statement now includes a preference for access by public or private online URLs over tangible media such as CD-ROM or DVD-ROM. This more accurately reflects the reality of acquiring and managing digital content in modern workflows.

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The Future of Email Archives: A Report from the Task Force on Technical Approaches for Email Archives

CLIR has released The Future of Email Archives: A Report from the Task Force on Technical Approaches for Email Archives.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The report presents the findings of a yearlong investigation of the Task Force on Technical Approaches for Email Archives, sponsored by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Digital Preservation Coalition. The 19-member task force, comprising representatives from higher education, government, and industry, was co-chaired by Christopher Prom, of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Kate Murray, of the Library of Congress.

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