Category: Digital Curation & Digital Preservation

"The Twitter Archive at the Library of Congress: Challenges for information Practice and Information Policy"

Michael Zimmer has published "The Twitter Archive at the Library of Congress: Challenges for information Practice and Information Policy" in First Monday.

Here's an excerpt:

In April 2010, the U.S. Library of Congress and the popular micro-blogging company Twitter announced that every public tweet, since Twitter's inception in March 2006, will be archived digitally at the Library and made available to researchers. The Library of Congress' planned digital archive of all public tweets holds great promise for the research community, yet, over five years since its announcement, the archive remains unavailable. This paper explores the challenges faced by the Library that have prevented the timely realization of this valuable archive, divided into two categories: challenges involving practice, such as how to organize the tweets, how to provide useful means of retrieval, how to physically store them; and challenges involving policy, such as the creation of access controls to the archive, whether any information should be censored or restricted, and the broader ethical considerations of the very existence of such an archive, especially privacy and user control.

| New: Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 5 | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

Stewardship of the Evolving Scholarly Record: From the Invisible Hand to Conscious Coordination

OCLC Research has released Stewardship of the Evolving Scholarly Record: From the Invisible Hand to Conscious Coordination.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Key highlights include:

  • As the scholarly record continues to evolve, conscious coordination will become an important organizing principle for stewardship models.
  • Past stewardship models were built on an "invisible hand" approach that relied on the uncoordinated, institution-scale efforts of individual academic libraries acting autonomously to maintain local collections.
  • Future stewardship of the evolving scholarly record requires conscious coordination of context, commitments, specialization, and reciprocity.
  • With conscious coordination, local stewardship efforts leverage scale by collecting more of less.
  • Keys to conscious coordination include right-scaling consolidation, cooperation, and community mix.
  • Reducing transaction costs and building trust facilitate conscious coordination.
  • Incentives to participate in cooperative stewardship activities should be linked to broader institutional priorities.

| New: Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 5 | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Examination of Federal Data Management Plan Guidelines"

Jennifer L. Thoegersen has published "Examination of Federal Data Management Plan Guidelines" in the Journal of eScience Librarianship .

Here's an excerpt:

This paper examines federal funding agencies' data management plan guidelines in relation to the broad elements of data management identified by the Interagency Working Group on Digital Data: Description, Impact, Content & Format, Protection, Preservation, Access, and Transfer of Responsibility. Specifically, statements in agencies' guidelines were categorized into the most applicable category (or categories). The representation of each category within each agency's guidelines was addressed, and the statements falling in each category were analyzed. Some categories, including Access and Preservation, were represented in all or nearly all of the guidelines examined. Other categories-Impact and Transfer of Responsibility-were rarely addressed.

| New: Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 5 | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Project to Production: Digital Preservation at the Houses of Parliament, 2010-2020"

Christopher Fryer has published "Project to Production: Digital Preservation at the Houses of Parliament, 2010-2020" in the International Journal of Digital Curation.

Here's an excerpt:

The Parliamentary Archives is responsible for preserving and providing access to the historical records of the UK Parliament, a collection of national, and indeed international, importance which encompasses a wide range of digital content, created and used in an ever changing environment. Since 2010 a staged project has led to the successful implementation of an operational digital repository. The transition from project to production allows the Parliamentary Archives to reflect on the organisation's progress in digital preservation. However, the deployment of a production digital repository also allows the Parliamentary Archives to outline future goals. The project has demonstrated the viability of implementing digital preservation infrastructure. The challenge remains to embed digital preservation as a business as usual activity.

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"Evaluating the Creation and Preservation Challenges of Photogrammetry-based 3D Models"

Michael J. Bennett has self-archived "Evaluating the Creation and Preservation Challenges of Photogrammetry-based 3D Models."

Here's an excerpt:

Though the roots of photogrammetry can be traced back to photography's earliest days, only recent advances in both digital technology and software applications have put the possibilities of 3D modeling from 2D source images in the hands of the greater cultural heritage community. The possibilities of such 3D digital rendering are many. With these possibilities come unique digital preservation challenges. This study explores basic close-range photogrammetry as applied to sample archival objects. Additionally, the latest BagIt and ZIP-based bundling formats along with repository-based solutions are also surveyed as potential 3D data management and archiving aggregators for resulting 3D models.

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Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 5

Digital Scholarship has released Version 5 of the Research Data Curation Bibliography. This selective bibliography includes over 350 English-language articles, books, and technical reports that are useful in understanding the curation of digital research data in academic and other research institutions.

The "digital curation" concept is still evolving. In "Digital Curation and Trusted Repositories: Steps toward Success," Christopher A. Lee and Helen R. Tibbo define digital curation as follows:

Digital curation involves selection and appraisal by creators and archivists; evolving provision of intellectual access; redundant storage; data transformations; and, for some materials, a commitment to long-term preservation. Digital curation is stewardship that provides for the reproducibility and re-use of authentic digital data and other digital assets. Development of trustworthy and durable digital repositories; principles of sound metadata creation and capture; use of open standards for file formats and data encoding; and the promotion of information management literacy are all essential to the longevity of digital resources and the success of curation efforts.

Most sources have been published from January 2009 through December 2014; however, a limited number of earlier key sources are also included. The bibliography includes links to freely available versions of included works. If such versions are unavailable, links to the publishers' descriptions are provided.

Abstracts are included in this bibliography if a work is under a Creative Commons Attribution License (BY and national/international variations), a Creative Commons public domain dedication (CC0), or a Creative Commons Public Domain Mark and this is clearly indicated in the work (see the "Note on the Inclusion of Abstracts" for more details).

It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

"Development of a Scale for Measuring Perceptions of Trustworthiness for Digitized Archival Documents"

Devan Rays Donaldson has self-archived "Development of a Scale for Measuring Perceptions of Trustworthiness for Digitized Archival Documents."

Here's an excerpt:

This dissertation advances scholarship on trustworthiness in three ways. First, it revises an existing conceptual model for trustworthiness perception. Second, it creates an original measurement model for digitized archival document trustworthiness perception-the Digitized Archival Document Trustworthiness Scale (DADTS). Third, it contributes to a deeper understanding of the concept of trustworthiness by providing measurement of the concept in a way that is sensitive to its nuances.

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The Digital POWRR Project—A Final Report to the Institute of Museum and Library Services

Jaime L. Schumacher has self-archived The Digital POWRR Project—A Final Report to the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Here's an excerpt:

The POWRR project investigated and reported on scalable digital preservation (DP) solutions for small and mid-sized institutions often faced with small staff sizes, restricted IT infrastructures, and tight budgets. Its major deliverable, a white paper, has been well-received and widely read. During the investigation, POWRR uncovered the particular challenges and needs of under-resourced institutions and worked to address and overcome obstacles that often prevent practitioners from taking initial steps in preserving digital content. As a result, POWRR also delivered a well-marked, practical path towards sustainable digital stewardship by: creating a graphic-based tool grid that maps the functionalities of 60+ DP tools/services to an OAIS-based curation lifecycle; developing and teaching a pragmatic, hands-on workshops across the country on the initial steps necessary to accession digital content and how to realistically approach developing a DP program; and producing case studies, collaboration models, and other tools to aid smaller institutions in their DP efforts.

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"Facing the Challenge of Web Archives Preservation Collaboratively: The Role and Work of the IIPC Preservation Working Group"

Andrea Goethals et al. have published "Facing the Challenge of Web Archives Preservation Collaboratively: The Role and Work of the IIPC Preservation Working Group" in D-Lib Magazine.

Here's an excerpt:

Accessing the web has become part of our everyday lives. Web archiving is performed by libraries, archives, companies and other organizations around the world. Many of these web archives are represented in the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC) . This article documents goals and activities of the IIPC Preservation Working Group (PWG), such as a survey about the current state of preservation in member web archives and a number of collaborative projects which the Preservation Working Group is developing. These resources are designed to help address the preservation and long-term access to the web by sharing ideas and experiences, and by building up databases of information for support of preservation strategies and actions.

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"Learning from Failure: The Case of the Disappearing Web Site"

Francine Barone et al. have published "Learning from Failure: The Case of the Disappearing Web Site" in .

Here's an excerpt:

This paper presents the findings of the Gone Dark Project, a joint study between the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology and the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University. The project has sought to give substance to frequent reports of Web sites "disappearing" (URLs that generate "404 not found" errors) by tracking and investigating cases of excellent and important Web sites which are no longer accessible online. We first address the rationale and research methods for the project before focusing on several key case studies illustrating some important challenges in Web preservation. Followed by a brief overview of the strengths and weaknesses of current Web archiving practice, the lessons learned from these case studies will inform practical recommendations that might be considered in order to improve the preservation of online content within and beyond existing approaches to Web preservation and archiving.

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"What Do We Mean by ‘Preserving Digital Information’? Towards Sound Conceptual Foundations for Digital Stewardship"

Simone Sacchi has self-archived "What Do We Mean by 'Preserving Digital Information'? Towards Sound Conceptual Foundations for Digital Stewardship."

Here's an excerpt:

Digital preservation is fundamental to information stewardship in the 21st century. Although much useful work on preservation strategies has been accomplished, we do not yet have an adequate conceptual framework that articulates precisely and formally what preservation actually is. The intention of the account provided here is to bring us closer to this goal. Following an initial analysis of the concept of preservation as it occurs in ordinary discourse around digital stewardship, several influential preservation models are analyzed, identifying both useful insights and problems. A framework of interrelated concepts is then developed that analyzes the challenges of long term digital stewardship through the lens of information communication.

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"Fast and Made to Last: Academic Blogs Look to Ensure Long-Term Accessibility and Stability of Content"

Christof Schöch has published "Fast and Made to Last: Academic Blogs Look to Ensure Long-Term Accessibility and Stability of Content" in Impact of Social Sciences.

Here's an excerpt:

The advantage of blogs compared with such talks is that here, discussions can happen across geographical and temporal borders, and that they stay visible online in comments or companion posts. But aren't blog posts, ultimately, almost as fleeting as a talk at a workshop? Who makes sure the content stays online not just today and tomorrow, but in the long term? Who guarantees that the link to the post remains the same? Who ensures that the text will not be modified later on? These are issues that need to be resolved if blogs are to be reliable, trusted, citeable resources and receive academic recognition even in the absence of traditional pre-publication peer-review. . . . The research blogging platform hypotheses.org has understood this early on. This fact is undoubtedly a factor in the success of the platform, which is run by the French initiative OpenEdition and currently hosts 1006 (and counting) research blogs in French, Spanish, Portuguese, German and English coming from the Humanities and Social Sciences.

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IMLS Releases Four National Digital Platform Grant Proposals

IMLS has released four national digital platform grant proposals for projects it awarded grants to.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

  • Fostering a New National Library Network through a Community-­Based, Connected Repository System (LG-70-15-0006): The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), Stanford University, and DuraSpace will foster a greatly expanded network of open-access, content-hosting "hubs" that will enable discovery and interoperability, as well as the reuse of digital resources by people from this country and around the world. The three partners will engage in a major development of the community-driven open source Hydra project to provide these hubs with a new all-in-one solution, which will also allow countless other institutions to easily join the national digital platform.
  • Museum Hub for Open Content (LG-70-15-0002): ARTstor, in collaboration with the El Paso Museum of Art, the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Staten Island Museum, and the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) will create and implement software to enable museums to contribute digital image collections for open public access. The project will lower barriers to museum contributions to the DPLA by producing enhanced metadata tools, intellectual property rights decision support tools, and a direct-to-DPLA publishing capacity.
  • Combining Social Media Storytelling with Web Archives (LG-71-15-0077): Old Dominion University and the Internet Archive will collaborate to develop tools and techniques for integrating "storytelling" social media and web archiving. The partners will use information retrieval techniques to (semi-)automatically generate stories summarizing a collection and mine existing public stories as a basis for librarians, archivists, and curators to create collections about breaking events.
  • Repository Services for Accessible Course Content (LG-72-15-0009): This planning project, led by Tufts University, will bring together experts from disability services, including librarians, IT professionals, advocates, and legal counsel, to develop work plans for shared infrastructure, within which universities can support their students with disabilities. The intention is to create specifications and a business model that will complement existing platforms and services.

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Preparing the Workforce for Digital Curation

The National Academies Press has released Preparing the Workforce for Digital Curation .

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The massive increase in digital information in the last decade has created new requirements arising from a deficit in the institutional and technological structures and the human capital necessary to utilize and sustain the abundance of new digital information. This National Research Council consensus study report focuses on the need for education and training in digital curation to meet the societal demands for access to and meaningful use of digital information, now and in the future. For the purposes of this study, digital curation is defined as: "The active management and enhancement of digital information assets for current and future use." This definition provided the committee with a shared understanding of the scope of digital curation. As discussed below, digital curation entails more than secure storage and preservation of digital information because curation may add value to digital information and increase its utility.

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"Digital Curation Education and Training: From Digitization to Graduate Curricula to MOOCs"

Helen R. Tibbo has published "Digital Curation Education and Training: From Digitization to Graduate Curricula to MOOCs" in the International Journal of Digital Curation.

Here's an excerpt:

This paper traces the development of digital and data curation curricula. Due to the brief length of this paper, the focus is on North American initiatives and primarily on continuing education programs. It explores the strengths and weaknesses of professional workshops and the creation of graduate-level courses, certificates, degrees and MOOCs, as well as the role of funding agencies in this process. It concludes with an analysis of what is missing and what is needed to create the workforce required to steward digital assets in the foreseeable future

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"Sustaining Consistent Video Presentation"

Dave Rice has published "Sustaining Consistent Video Presentation" in Tate Papers.

Here's an excerpt:

This technical paper addresses approaches to identifying and mitigating risks associated with sustaining the consistent presentation of digital video files. . . .

Presenting digital video consistently is dependent on the design, coordination and quality of all aspects of both the video file and the video player. Specific factors such as what features of a codec are supported by the decoder, and how one colour space is converted to another affect how videos are presented. Media players are of course developed over time—new features are added and bugs are resolved—but while such changes may improve the quality of a player they also create scenarios where a digital media file may play differently in a new version of a player compared to an older one. As a result, the ever-evolving state of media playback technology creates challenges or technical complications for audio-visual conservators who are tasked with ensuring that digital video is presented consistently and as originally intended.

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"Storage is a Strategic Issue: Digital Preservation in the Cloud"

Gillian Oliver and Steve Knight have published "Storage is a Strategic Issue: Digital Preservation in the Cloud" in .

Here's an excerpt:

Worldwide, many governments are mandating a 'cloud first' policy for information technology infrastructures. In 2013, the National Library of New Zealand's National Digital Heritage Archive (NDHA) outsourced storage of its digital collections. A case study of the decision to outsource and its consequences was conducted, involving interviews of the representatives of three key stakeholders: IT, the NDHA, and the vendor. Clear benefits were identified by interviewees, together with two main challenges. The challenges related to occupational culture tensions, and a shift in funding models. Interviewees also considered whether the cultural heritage sector had any unique requirements. A key learning was that information managers were at risk of being excluded from the detail of outsourcing, and so needed to be prepared to assert their need to know based on their stewardship mandate.

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NEH Division of Preservation and Access Research and Development Grants

The NEH Division of Preservation and Access has released guidelines for its latest Research and Development Grants program.

Here's an excerpt:

The Research and Development program is now offering grants of up to $75,000 for planning and basic research (Tier I). The grants support planning and preliminary work for large-scale research and development projects, and stand-alone basic research projects (such as case studies, experiments, and the development of iterative tools).

The program (formerly known as Preservation and Access Research and Development) continues as well to offer grants of up to $350,000 for advanced implementation (Tier II): the development of standards, practices, methodologies, or workflows for preserving and creating access to humanities collections; and applied research addressing preservation and access issues concerning humanities collections. Applicants for Tier II grants will need to provide a separate one- to two-page detailed plan for dissemination of project results.

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"Digital Curation and Doctoral Research"

Daisy Abbott has published "Digital Curation and Doctoral Research" in the International Journal of Digital Curation.

Here's an excerpt:

This article considers digital curation in doctoral study and the role of the doctoral supervisor and institution in facilitating students' acquisition of digital curation skills, including some of the potentially problematic expectations of the supervisory relationship with regards to digital curation. Research took the form of an analysis of the current digital curation training landscape, focusing on doctoral study and supervision. This was followed by a survey (n=116) investigating attitudes towards importance, expertise, and responsibilities regarding digital curation. This research confirms that digital curation is considered to be very important within doctoral study but that doctoral supervisors and particularly students consider themselves to be largely unskilled at curation tasks. It provides a detailed picture of curation activity within doctoral study and identifies the areas of most concern. A detailed analysis demonstrates that most of the responsibility for curation is thought to lie with students and that institutions are perceived to have very low responsibility and that individuals tend to over-assign responsibility to themselves. Finally, the research identifies which types of support system for curation are most used and makes suggestions for ways in which students, supervisors, institutions, and others can effectively and efficiently address problematic areas and improve digital curation within doctoral study.

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"What Factors Influence Where Researchers Deposit their Data? A Survey of Researchers Submitting to Data Repositories"

Shea Swauger and Todd J. Vision have published "What Factors Influence Where Researchers Deposit their Data? A Survey of Researchers Submitting to Data Repositories" in the International Journal of Digital Curation.

Here's an excerpt:

In order to better understand the factors that most influence where researchers deposit their data when they have a choice, we collected survey data from researchers who deposited phylogenetic data in either the TreeBASE or Dryad data repositories. Respondents were asked to rank the relative importance of eight possible factors. We found that factors differed in importance for both TreeBASE and Dryad, and that the rankings differed subtly but significantly between TreeBASE and Dryad users. On average, TreeBASE users ranked the domain specialization of the repository highest, while Dryad users ranked as equal highest their trust in the persistence of the repository and the ease of its data submission process. Interestingly, respondents (particularly Dryad users) were strongly divided as to whether being directed to choose a particular repository by a journal policy or funding agency was among the most or least important factors. Some users reported depositing their data in multiple repositories and archiving their data voluntarily.

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"Digital Forensics on A Shoestring: A Case Study from the University of Victoria"

John Durno and Jerry Trofimchuk have published "Digital Forensics on A Shoestring: A Case Study from the University of Victoria" in Code4Lib Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

While much has been written on the increasing importance of digital forensics in archival workflows, most of the literature focuses on theoretical issues or establishing best practices in the abstract. Where case studies exist, most have been written from the perspective of larger organizations with well-resourced digital forensics facilities. However organizations of any size are increasingly likely to receive donations of born-digital material on outdated media, and a need exists for more modest solutions to the problem of acquiring and preserving their contents. This case study outlines the development of a small-scale digital forensics program at the University of Victoria using inexpensive components and open source software, funded by a $2000 research grant from the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL).

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DSpace 5 Released

DuraSpace has released DSpace 5.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

With a new, modern look and feel for every device, the ability to auto-upgrade from older versions of DSpace, to batch import content and more, the release of DSpace 5 offers its far-flung global community of developers and stakeholders an even easier-to-use and more efficient institutional repository solution.

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Debra Hanken Kurtz Named as DuraSpace CEO

Debra Hanken Kurtz has been named as DuraSpace's CEO.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

It brings us great pleasure to announce that the DuraSpace Board of Directors has chosen Debra Hanken Kurtz to serve as the new CEO for the Organization. Kurtz is currently the Executive Director of the Texas Digital Library. She will begin in her new role on February 16, 2015 and establish an office in Austin, Texas to manage DuraSpace business operations.

Kurtz brings key relevant experience and skills to DuraSpace. As Executive Director of the Texas Digital Library, she managed and grew membership, operations, and services. She participates in working and planning groups for DPN and SHARE. At both Duke University and UNC Chapel Hill Libraries, Kurtz provided leadership and direction for digital collections, public websites, and early planning efforts for both libraries' institutional repositories. She was an active partner within the Triangle Research Libraries Network and has been a voice for Kuali OLE, an open-source integrated library system built by and for academic and research libraries. Kurtz's complete background can be found on linkedin.

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iPres 2014: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Digital Preservation

The International Conference on Digital Preservation has released iPres 2014: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Digital Preservation.

Here's an excerpt:

Papers covered a wide array of preservation topics including migration and emulation, file format management, registries and linked data, funding models, education and training, personal archiving and software-based art, web archiving, metadata and persistent identifiers.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"