Category: Digital Curation & Digital Preservation

Preserving Email

The Digital Preservation Coalition has released Preserving Email.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Gareth Knight of King's College London welcomed the report. 'Preserving Email provides an excellent overview of the topic, drawing together observations made in a number of research projects to provide a succinct overview of the legal, technical, and cultural issues that must be addressed to ensure that these digital assets can be curated and preserved in the long-term. Its conclusion, providing a set of pragmatic, easy-to-understand recommendations that individuals and institutions may apply to better manage their email archive, highlights the complexity of email preservation. It also sends a clear message that it is something that everyone can perform.'

| Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Data-Intensive Research: Community Capability Model Framework (Consultation Draft)

The Community Capability Model for Data-Intensive Research project has released a consultation draft of the Community Capability Model Framework.

Here's an excerpt:

The Community Capability Model Framework is a tool developed by UKOLN, University of Bath, and Microsoft Research to assist institutions, research funders and researchers in growing the capability of their communities to perform data-­-intensive research by

  • profiling the current readiness or capability of the community,
  • indicating priority areas for change and investment, and
  • developing roadmaps for achieving a target state of readiness.

The Framework is comprised of eight capability factors representing human, technical and environmental issues. Within each factor are a series of community characteristics that are relevant for determining the capability or readiness of that community to perform data- intensive research.

| E-science and Academic Libraries Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Rendering Matters—Report on the Results of Research into Digital Object Rendering

Archives New Zealand has released Rendering Matters—Report on the Results of Research into Digital Object Rendering.

Here's an excerpt from the report:

Maintaining the ability of an organisation or user to be able to "open" or "render" a file or set of files is one of the core digital preservation challenges. This report outlines the results of research investigating whether changes are introduced to the information that is presented to users when files are rendered in different hardware and software environments. The report concludes with a set of observations about the impact of the research and provides some recommendations for future research in this area.

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

Open Access: Online Survey on Scientific Information in the Digital Age

The European Commission has released the Online Survey on Scientific Information in the Digital Age.

Here's an excerpt:

Respondents were asked if there is no access problem to scientific publications in Europe: 84 % disagreed or disagreed strongly with the statement. The high prices of journals/subscriptions (89%) and limited library budgets (85%) were signalled as the most important barriers to accessing scientific publications. More than 1,000 respondents (90%) supported the idea that publications resulting from publicly funded research should, as a matter of principle, be in open access (OA) mode. An even higher number of respondents (91%) agreed or agreed strongly that OA increased access to and dissemination of scientific publications. Self-archiving ("green OA") or a combination of self-archiving and OA publishing ("gold OA") were identified as the preferred ways that public research policy should facilitate in order to increase the number and share of scientific publications available in OA. Respondents were asked, in the case of self-archiving ("green OA"), what the desirable embargo period is (period of time during which publication is not yet open access): a six-month period was favoured by 56% of respondents (although 25% disagree with this option).

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

Digital Preservation: The Digital Dilemma 2: Perspectives from Independent Filmmakers, Documentarians and Nonprofit Audiovisual Archives

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has released The Digital Dilemma 2: Perspectives from Independent Filmmakers, Documentarians and Nonprofit Audiovisual Archives (registration required).

The Academy’s first report, The Digital Dilemma: Strategic Issues in Archiving and Accessing Digital Motion Picture Materials (registration required), is also available.

| Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

Digital Preservation: Report on Decision Factors and Their Influence on Planning

The Scalable Preservation Environments project has released the Report on Decision Factors and Their Influence on Planning.

Here's an excerpt:

This report sheds light on the actual decision criteria and influence factors to be considered when choosing digital preservation actions. It is based on an extensive evaluation of case studies on preservation planning for a range of different types of objects with partners from different institutional backgrounds. We analyse objective trees from a number of real-world decision making instances and classify the objectives and decision criteria. We analyse the measurability and required information for decision criteria, and the objectives and decision factors contained in objective trees. We further discuss the mapping of different quality models and map decision criteria to standardised models for decision factors in the areas of software quality, format assessment, and object properties.

| Digital Scholarship's Digital Bibliographies | Digital Scholarship |

AIMS Born-Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship

The AIMS Project has released AIMS Born-Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship.

Here's an excerpt:

The AIMS project evolved around a common need among the project partners — and most libraries and archives — to identify a methodology or continuous framework for stewarding born-digital archival materials. These materials have been slowly accumulating in archival backlogs for years but are rapidly growing as more contemporary collections are accessioned. . . .

Into this climate, the AIMS partners proposed an inter-institutional framework for stewarding born-digital content. The AIMS partners realized that they could not solve all problems associated with born-digital materials but decided to focus their attention on professional practice defined by archival principles and by the current state of collections at the partner institutions.

In developing the AIMS Framework, the project would apply a practitioner-based research approach by developing a model based on real case studies of collections at each institution. Applying our theories would confirm or challenge the initial framework which could then be used as a model around which to build individual workflows and processes within each partner's organization.

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, Version 80 | Digital Scholarship |

Report on the Data Curation Research Summit

Nicholas Weber et al. have self-archived Report on the Data Curation Research Summit in IDEALS.

Here's an excerpt:

The Data Curation Research Summit was a one-day meeting, sponsored by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The objectives were to build awareness of current research projects and important research problems, foster stronger collaborations among researchers, and advance the Library and Information Science (LIS) research agenda in data curation. It was held in Chicago on December 9th, 2010, following the 6th International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC). The conference provided an excellent opportunity to bring together scholars and practitioners with a strong interest in advancing scholarship and practice in the curation of research data. The 35 invited participants, representing iSchools, research libraries, academic publishers, and funding agencies, are active in the growing research community and related areas of digital curation and archives.

| Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

DAITSS (Dark Archive in the Sunshine State) Released under GPL v. 3 License

The Florida Center for Library Automation has released DAITSS (Dark Archive in the Sunshine State) under a GPL v. 3 License.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

DAITSS provides automated support for the functions of Submission, Ingest, Archival Storage, Access, Withdrawal, and Repository Management. It is architected as a set of RESTful Web Services and micro-services but enforces strict controls to ensure the integrity and authenticity of archived content. It implements active preservation strategies based on format-specific processing including, where necessary, normalization and forward migration. It is particularly well suited for materials in text, document, image, audio and video formats.

DAITSS was written for a multi-user environment and supports consortial as well as institutional preservation repositories.

Read more about it at "DAITSS, an OAIS-based Preservation Repository" and "DAITSS Grows Up: Migrating to a Second-Generation Preservation System."

| Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

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 |