Preserving Email DPC Technology Watch Report released.

Preserving Email DPC Technology Watch Report released. Neil Beagrie.  Blog. News release. 17 Feb 2012.  
The 57 page Preserving Email technology watch report gives practical advice on how to ensure that  email remains accessible.   "Users normally shoulder the ultimate responsibility for managing and preserving their own email.  This exposes important records to needless risks and is counterproductive in many cases." The three basic steps which institutions should undertake:

1. Define policies, including institutional commitment, specific actions to take, and end-user expectations, responsibilities and rights regarding the email archives
2. choosing appropriate tools to work with email in an environment where users have adequate storage space and without auto-deletion settings
3. implementing them in the light of local environmental factors and available resources.

 The report suggests five different preservation strategies with possible tools (such as Aid4Mail and Emailchemy) or methods (co-managing archive folders) in some of the cases, for the institution and individuals.

1. The ‘sweeping up crumbs’ or whole-account approach refers to harvesting email found on a user’s computer or account. 
2. The ‘nurturing and harvesting’ approach, helping email users ensure that critical records are retained in system-neutral formats, then using email migration software to capture and preserve records either as they are created or at the end of a user’s lifetime. An example is providing users a designated ‘archives’ box.
3. The ‘capturing carbon’ or whole system approach implements email archiving software to capture an entire email ecosystem or a portion of that ecosystem to an external email storage environment.
4. The ‘tagging and bagging’ or message-by-message approach, existing electronic record management systems, but which may not be effective.
5. The Personal Archives Service approach, which would offer services such as Carbonite or CrashPlan.

Unless we make the preservation of trusted email records a systematic part of our everyday operations, many important records will be lost. They cite some examples, such as the 22 million emails from the Executive Office of the President of the United States surrounding the Gulf War that we lost when servers were replaced. 

Digital Preservation Matters.

Lessons From a (Former?) Digital Preservation Neophyte.

Lessons From a (Former?) Digital Preservation Neophyte. Chris Prom. Website. April 10, 2012.

What do we really need to do:

1. Render objects
2.  Retain evidence
3. Show authenticity

We do not need to understand it all at once, nor implement it all at the same time

1. Get your own house in order
2.  Begin helping others
3. Develop a digital program statement
4. Acquire and deal with digital born stuff
5.  Begin to implement a TDR

General Process:

• Understand your limitations
• Understand the format and structure of what you are trying to preserve
•  Match tools to desired services
• Be consistent
•  Be willing to experiment (and fail)
•  Provide something other people need

• The process of learning an art can be divided conveniently into two parts: one, the mastery of the theory the other, the mastery of the practice. Erich Fromm
• Thought can only lead us to the knowledge but  it cannot give us the ultimate answer.  The only way in which the world can ultimately be grasped lies not in thought, but in the act.”

 

Digital Preservation Matters.

The Digital Preservation Network.

The Digital Preservation Network. George Eberhart. American Libraries Magazine. May 4, 2012.
The ARL membership meeting discussed the recently established Digital Preservation Network, a federation of universities intent on securing the long-term preservation of the digital scholarly record.  James Hilton said that only universities, not private industry, can solve the problem of preserving born-digital data and making it accessible to future generations. “Universities last for centuries. Companies do not.”
Other notes from the report:

• The problem is too large for just libraries to handle. The presidents of universities must be on board with this.
• The data and metadata of research and scholarship are susceptible to multiple single points of technical, political, and funding failure.
• The program asks for a $20,000 initial commitment to help fund project software.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Digital Preservation Tools.

Digital Preservation Tools.  Paul Wheatley. SPRUCE Project Wiki. May 10, 2012.
Open Planets Foundation Digital Preservation Tool Registry. This lists many tools of all types that may be just what you are looking for, and also references to additional tool lists, such as http://agogified.com/tools-and-services.  A few of the categories include:

• Transcription Tools
• DataOne
• Forensic tools
• PDF Creation
• File Conversion tools
• Audio file conversion tools
• Web capture
• Email mining tools
• Record analysis tools
• Curation and data management tools
• Bulk extractor tools
• etc.

Digital Preservation Matters. 

Digital Preservation: Question and Response

Question: We are trying to move away from multiple physical copies of our archival audio.  Our goal is to just have redundant digital copies and one physical copy on some medium in case of catastrophic failure with the servers. What physical medium other audio archives are using for preservation/backup copies of digital audio files.

Response: It is important to have redundant digital copies in case of failure; we have had a number of occasions where we needed to recover objects from a second or third copy when other copies failed.  There are different ways to accomplish multiple digital copies, such as copies on server, tape (LTO), cloud (DuraCloud and others), and optical discs, or a mixture. There are advantages and disadvantages with each option; we have a mixture of these, but are moving towards two options, server copies with tape backup, and M-DISCs.  We have started using the Rosetta software to manage the server copies, which will have tape copies stored in a secure off site location.  But I want an additional copy on another medium, which is our M-DISC archive.

In general optical CDs and DVDs have a short lifespan.  For a number of years, I have been caring for a large disc archive of gold CDs and DVDs; there are multiple copies for redundancy. (There are tape copies also, which have had problems as well, but the gold archival discs have been considered the preservation copies.) Multiple copies are necessary since a percentage of the discs fail each year (the percentage depends on the collection).  In order to solve that problem, two professors on campus (Information Technology, and Chemistry & Material Science) created a digital storage medium that does not fail over time and is unaffected by any normal factors, such as light, heat, cold, oxidation, pollutants, material decay, bit flips, etc.  (Extreme stress tests by the US military could not get the discs to fail.)

The university licensed the technology to a company called Millenniata which has partnered with LG and others to produce the M-DISC.  Currently the M-DISC is a DVD format, which is somewhat of a drawback if you want to store large archives, but they are developing other densities and options. (There are some organizations using a multi-terabyte Millenniata device, but I have not seen it.) I have tested and used the M-DISCs for several years and have not had any problems.  (I plan to start another round of testing on my M-DISC archive this year to check on the status of the discs; I check them for usability, read error levels, and bit transfer integrity.) So I consider this my ‘copy in case of catastrophic failure’, while the Rosetta archive is my ‘active preservation archive’. There are others in the library and on campus (digital lab, records management, etc) that use the M-DISCs for their own long term copy for images, documents, audio, video, and such. Whatever you choose, you should think about multiple copies in multiple places on multiple media.  What you choose needs to fit your circumstances and be sustainable for your program. 

 Digital Preservation Matters.

Applying to NEH's Preservation Assistance Grants - Webinar.

Applying to NEH's Preservation Assistance Grants - Webinar. Elizabeth Joffrion. National Endowment for the Humanities.March 12, 2012.
An excellent webinar for the Connecting to Collections community on the NEH's Preservation Assistance Grant, what they are, how to apply for them, and examples of some projects that have been funded, including BYU's grant for a digital preservation workshop. Includes an introduction to the grants; who qualifies as a smaller institution; proposal development and grant writing strategies.They encourage institutions that have never applied before. The PAG grants are easy to write and there is no sharing cost.

 Digital Preservation Matters.

Library of Congress Digital Preservation Newsletter.

Library of Congress Digital Preservation Newsletter. May 2012. [PDF]
Items from the Newsletter include:

• Key outcomes of the NDIIPP program are to identify priorities for born digital collections and engage organizations committed to preserving digital content.
• Viewshare  is being used for the collections
• Floppy Disks are Dead, Long Live Floppy Disks
• Floppy disks are fragile constructions that were never designed for permanence.
• Difficult to determine what is on the floppy and to recover
• A floppy disk controller called Catweasel allows computers to access a wide variety of older disk formats (must have the floppy drive).
• Web archiving.  
• Because of the scope of the web sites, consider partnering with other institutions.
•  Preservation of and Access to Federally Funded Scientific Data
• Research data produced by federally funded scientific projects should be freely available to the wider research community and the public
• Public data should be a public resource, and data sharing supports core scientific values like openness, transparency, and replication. 
• Lack of resources for curating scientific data and a lingering tradition of data hoarding create resistance to open access to research data.

 Digital Preservation Matters.

Guidelines on the Production and Preservation of Digital Audio.

Guidelines on the Production and Preservation of Digital Audio. The International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives. ed. by Kevin Bradley. Second edition 2009.
A web version of guidelines on creating and preserving digital audio objects.  Areas of interest covered include:

• Metadata, including preservation metadata
• Important to keep all aspects of preservation and transfer relating to audio files, including all technical parameters 
• Persistent Identifiers
• Naming conventions
• Digital preservation planning
• OAIS: the services and functions for monitoring the environment and providing recommendations to ensure that the information stored remains accessible to the Designated User Community over the long term, even if the original computing environment becomes obsolete
• Preservation planning is the process of knowing the technical issues in the repository, identifying the future preservation direction (pathways), and determining when a preservation action, such as format migration, will need to be made.
• Small scale digital archiving
• Digital preservation is as much an economic issue as a technical one.
• Any proposal to build and manage an archive of digital audio objects should have a strategy which includes plans for the funding of ongoing maintenance and replacement
• Risks
• The only way to know the condition of a digital collection is constant and comprehensive testing.
• A preservation strategy requires a listing of the risks associated with the loss of technical expertise and how that will be addressed.   
• An archive can distribute risk in a number of ways,  such as:
• form local partnerships so that content is distributed
• establish a relationship with a stable well funded archive; 
• engage a commercial supplier of storage services
• Recording formats
• It is not recommended that audio streams be recorded for long term storage.
• Recommend recording as a digital data file
• Recommend recording as .wav or preferably BWF .wav files 
• The large investment in a single format will also help support the continuance of that format for the longest period, as the industry will not change an entrenched format without significant benefits.
  
  Digital Preservation Matters.

New DuraCloud Digital Archiving and Preservation Services.

New DuraCloud Digital Archiving and Preservation Services. Press Release. Duraspace. May 1, 2012.
The DuraSpace organization announced new DuraCloud subscription plans that offer three levels digital preservation and archiving services in the cloud. Prices for the new subscription plans are competitive with commercial cloud providers and do not require additional transfer or variable costs.

1. DuraCloud Preservation Basic: for institutions that would like to have two redundant copies of their original content stored at one cloud data center. 
2. DuraCloud Preservation Plus: for institutions that wish to have four redundant copies of their original content stored at two cloud data centers. 
3. DuraCloud Enterprise: a full suite of configurable DuraCloud features for institutions that need multiple DuraCloud sub-accounts for departments, research groups, cross institutional projects, or individuals.

DuraCloud offers automated weekly content health checks, reporting, file repair  and more. It  runs on Amazon AWS, Rackspace and in the near future on the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) Cloud, and provides customers with:
• Copies of the content stored with multiple providers
• Automated health checking of content
• Automated repair of damaged files for Preservation Plus customers
• A full suite of reports
• Online sharing and streaming to any internet-linked device

Digital Preservation Matters.

Preserving Moving Pictures and Sound.

Preserving Moving Pictures and Sound. Richard Wright. DPC Technology Watch Report 12-01. March 2012. [PDF]
This excellent report is for anyone with responsibility for collections of sound or moving image content and an interest in preservation of that content. For audiovisual materials, digitization is critical to the survival of the content because of the obsolescence of playback equipment and decay and damage of physical items, whether analogue or digital.

The basic technology issue for audio/visual content is to digitize all items on the shelves, either for preservation or access. The risk of loss is high. Another issue is moving content from the current media to digital files. A third issue is preserving the digital files. This report describes the techniques for preservation planning, digitization and digital preservation of audiovisual content, and describes the technologies.  Preservation of these materials is difficult because they are physically, culturally, and economically different.
Explanation of signals and carriers. "Digital technology produces recordings that are independent of carriers. Carrier independence is liberation". Digital preservation of the digitized signal means to preserve the numbers, but also the technology to decode the numbers. ‘Maximum integrity’ means keeping the full quality of the audio and video. As far as possible, the new preservation copy should be an exact replica of the original: the content should not be modified in any way’. This may be difficult to achieve.

The two basic kinds of preservation action are: 1) changing the audiovisual content within a collection, or normalization; 2) changing the system that holds the collection.
There are four main factors in an analogue or digital conservation program:

1. packaging (wrappers), handling and storing;
2.  environmental conditions;
3.  protecting the masters; and
4.  condition monitoring, maintaining quality.

The four PrestoPRIME requirements for effective access to time-based media are:

1. granularity: division of the content into meaningful units;
2. navigation: the ability to select and use just one unit,
3. citation: the ability to cite a point on the time dimension of an audio or video file, with a permanent link
4. annotation: the ability of a user of content to make time-based contributions

Other topics include access rights, implications for small collections or institutions. The digitization standards, encoding, wrapper and metadata are all agreed and well documented.  There is no reason for the basic encoding to ever be changed, though wrappers may eventually become obsolete. All archives need to be aware of the risk of loss of embedded metadata. Finally, surveys have shown that in universities there is a major problem of material that is scattered, unidentified, undocumented and not under any form of preservation plan.

Digital Preservation Matters.

University of Utah Selects Ex Libris Rosetta for Long-Term Digital Preservation

University of Utah Selects Ex Libris Rosetta for Long-Term Digital Preservation. Press Release. April 30, 2012.
Ex Libris is pleased to announce that the University of Utah has opted for Ex Libris Rosetta to preserve the school's extensive cultural heritage collections, which include newspapers and other historical textual documents, photographs, rare books, oral history interviews (including transcripts and audio), motion picture collections, and more. In addition to cultural heritage collections, Rosetta will enable the University of Utah to preserve faculty publications and research data. The J. Willard Marriott Library hosts the collections of many campus departments and, as a member of the Mountain West Digital Library network, hosts collections belonging to other Utah institutions.

Digital Preservation Matters.

An Overview of Web Archiving.

An Overview of Web Archiving. Jinfang Niu. D-Lib Magazine. March/April 2012.
An article on the methods used at a variety of universities, and other institutions to select, acquire, describe and access web resources for their archives. Some notes from the article:

• Web archiving is the process of gathering up data that has been recorded on the World Wide Web, storing it, ensuring the data is preserved in an archive, and making the collected data available for future research.
• The workflow of web archiving includes appraisal and selection, acquisition, organization and storage, description and access. This workflow is the core of web archiving.
• Creating a web archive presents many challenges,  
• When archiving web content through web crawling programs, selection decisions are the basis for compiling a site list to crawl and configuring crawler parameters. Crawling may replace deposit for some things.
• In acquiring web resources, the decision of whether to seek permission from copyright owners depends on the legal environment of the web archive, the scale of the web archive, and the nature of archived content and the archiving organization.
•  Web archives need to preserve the authenticity and integrity of archived web content. The concept of provenance is important. 
• The library must decide how it will generate, store and use metadata. Also, how it will make this available to others.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Web Archives for Researchers: Representations, Expectations and Potential Uses.

Web Archives for Researchers: Representations, Expectations and Potential Uses. Peter Stirling, et al. D-Lib Magazine. March/April 2012.
Web archiving is one of the missions of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. This study looks at content and selection policy, services and promotion, and the role of communities and cooperation.  While the interest of maintaining the "memory" of the web is obvious to the researchers, they are faced with the difficulty of defining, in what is a seemingly limitless space, meaningful collections of documents. Cultural heritage institutions such as national libraries are perceived as trusted third parties capable of creating rationally-constructed and well-documented collections, but such archives raise certain ethical and methodological questions.

To find source material on the web, some researchers look for non-traditional sources, such as blogs and social networks.  Researchers recognize the value of web archives, especially because websites disappear or change quickly.  The Internet is no longer just a place for publishing things, “but rather the traces left by actions that people could equally perform in the streets or in a shop: talking to people, walking, buying things... It can seem improper to some to archive anything relating to this kind of individual activity. On the other hand, one of the researchers acknowledges that archiving this material would provide a rich source for research in the future, and thus compares archiving it to archaeology.”  Some ask, "How do you archive the flow of time?" New models may be needed. And when selecting an archive, the selection criteria should also be archived, as they may change over time.

Digital Preservation Matters.

The secrets of Digitalkoot: Lessons learned crowdsourcing data entry to 50,000 people (for free).

The secrets of Digitalkoot: Lessons learned crowdsourcing data entry to 50,000 people (for free). Tommaso De Benetti.  Microtask. June 16, 2011.
National Library of Finland launched a project called Digitalkoot, which was a test of crowdsourcing with 50,000 volunteers.  The aim was to digitize the National Library’s archives and make them searchable over the internet. The volunteers input data that Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software struggles with (for example documents that are handwritten or printed in old fonts). Digitalkoot relies on machines, humans and a gaming twist.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Dream of perpetual access comes true!

Dream of perpetual access comes true! Jeffrey van der Hoeven. Open Planets Foundation.  29 March 2012.
The KEEP project released its final version of the open source Emulation Framework software. This project has brought emulation in the digital preservation context to the next level, that is, user friendly.  The easy to install package runs on all major computer platforms.  It automates several steps:

1. identify what kind of digital file you want to render;
2. find the required software and computer platform you need;
3. match the requirements with available software and emulators;
4. install the emulator;
5. configure the emulator and prepare software environment;
6. inject the digital file you selected into the emulated environment;
7. give you control over the emulated environment.

 The software supports six different computer platforms out of the box: x86, Commodore 64, Amiga, BBC Micro, Amstrad, Thomson, by using seven open source emulators which are distributed  with the Emulation Framework. 

Digital Preservation Matters.

With tech breakthrough, Seagate promises 60TB drives this decade

With tech breakthrough, Seagate promises 60TB drives this decade.  Lucas Mearian. Computerworld.  March 20, 2012.

 Seagate said they have achieved a density of 1 terabit (1 trillion bits) per square inch on a disk drive platter. The technology would lead to the production this decade of 3.5-in. hard drives with up to 60TB of capacity.

As drive manufacturers store more bits per square inch on the surface of a disk, they also tighten the data tracks. The challenge as those tracks tighten is overcoming magnetic disruption between the bits of data, which causes bits to flip their magnetic poles resulting in data errors.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Brigham Young University Selects Ex Libris Rosetta

Brigham Young University Selects Ex Libris Rosetta. Press Release. February 14, 2012.
Ex Libris has announced that Brigham Young University (BYU) has selected the Ex Libris Rosetta digital preservation system. The first member of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) to adopt Rosetta, Brigham Young will implement Rosetta initially for the Harold B. Lee Library’s digital collections and will later expand the implementation to the digital assets of the university’s colleges and schools.

Rosetta encompasses the entire digital preservation workflow, including the acquisition, validation, ingest, storage, preservation, and delivery of digital objects. Rosetta enables academic institutions as well as libraries, archives, and other memory institutions to manage, preserve, and provide access to institutional documents, research output in digital formats, digital images, Web sites, and other digitally born and digitized materials.

Digital Preservation Matters. 

Why don't we already have an Integrated Framework for the Publication and Preservation of all Data Products?

Why don't we already have an Integrated Framework for the Publication and Preservation of all Data Products?   Alberto Accomazzi,et al. Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems.  
7 Dec 2011.
Astronomy has long had a working network of archives supporting the curation of publications and data. There are examples of websites giving access to data sets, but they are sometimes short lived.  "We can only realistically take implicit promises of long-term data archival as what they are: well-intentioned plans which are contingent on a number of factors, some of which are out of our control." We should take steps to ensure that our system of archiving, sharing and linking resources is as resilient as it can be.  Some ideas are: 

1. future-proof the naming system: assign persistent data IDs to items we want to preserve 
2. provide the ability to cite complete datasets, just as we can cite websites
3. include a data reference section in academic papers

Curated datasets need to be preserved indefinitely for scholarly purposes.

Digital Preservation Matters.

A literature review: What exactly should we preserve? How scholars address this question and where is the gap

A literature review: What exactly should we preserve? How scholars address this question and where is the gap.  Jyue Tyan Low. Cornell University Library. 7 Dec 2011.
There are generally two approaches to long-term preservation of digital materials

1. preserving the object in its original form as much as possible along with the accompanying systems,
2. migration or transformation: transforming the object to make it compatible with more current systems but retaining the original “look and feel.

Migration is the most widely used method, but there can be changes to the original.  If some of the original properties are lost, what then are the essential properties to maintaining its integrity?  Currently there are no formal and objective way to help stakeholders decide what the significant properties of the objects are, which are defined as:

The characteristics of digital objects that must be preserved over time in
order to ensure the continued accessibility, usability, and meaning of the
objects, and their capacity to be accepted as evidence of what they purport
to record.

An important goal of digital preservation is more than just retrieving the objects, it is to ensure the authenticity of the information.  A digital object can change as long as the final output is what it is expected to be.  The properties to preserve come from the purpose of the object, and at least one purpose for the object needs to be defined. Archivists have created standards that look at records in the context of their creation, intended use and preservation.  It is important to ask what features of the object is important when delivering to the user.  There may be many uses to many communities that were not intended by the object creator, so we should not let the ideal limit the reasonable.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Geospatial Data Preservation.

Geospatial Data Preservation. Website. November 2011.
The Geospatial Resource Center is being developed as a finding tool for freely available web-based resources about the preservation of geospatial information. A variety of selected resources are being added, including reports, presentations, standards, and information about tools for preparing geospatial assets for long-term access and use. The resources are indexed to enable searching of titles and are categorized to facilitate discovery by choosing among topics, resource types, or both. The website contains many valuable resources.  A few resources from these three categories:

Education & Training

• Appraisal and selection of geospatial data for preservation
• Best Practices for Geospatial Programs
• Copyright Quickguide

Tools & Software

• Cost Estimation Toolkit
• Conversion tools for geospatial data
• Geospatial metadata tools

Policies & Benefits

• Collection policies,
• Content standards,
• Policies on Open geospatial data access and preservation

OAIS / TDR presentation at FDLP.

OAIS / TDR presentation at FDLP.  James A. Jacobs. Federal Depository Library Conference. Free Government Information. October 2011. [PDF]
A presentation giving an introduction to the "Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System" (OAIS) and the "Audit And Certification Of Trustworthy Digital Repositories" (TDR).  This includes slides with speaker notes and a nice handout about related information with links. Every library decision should assess the impact of digital issues.  Notes:

OAIS
1. It defines the functional concepts of a long-term archive with consistent, unambiguous terminology.
2. It gives us a functional framework for designing archives, and a functional model.
3. It gives us a standard for “conformance.”
4. It is a “Reference Model” that describes functions; it is not an “implementation”
5. Some key OAIS concepts are:
   - Designated Community: An identified group of potential Consumers who should
      be able to understand a particular set of information.
   - Description of roles and functions in the information life cycle.
   - The Long Term: Long enough for there to be concern about changing technologies,
      new media and data formats, and a changing user community.
   - Preserved content must be usable according to the designated community

TDR
Documents what is being done and how well it is being done.
Provides 109 “metrics” for measuring conformance to OAIS in three areas: 
1. Organizational Infrastructure
2. Sustainability and succession plan
3. Digital Object Management
4. Technical Infrastructure And Security Risk Management

Cite Datasets and Link to Publications

Cite Datasets and Link to Publications. Digital Curation Centre. 18 October 2011.
The DCC has published a guide to help authors / researchers create links between their academic publications and the underlying datasets.  It is important for those reading the publication to be able to locate the dataset.  This recognizes that data generated during research are just as valuable to the ongoing academic discourse as papers and monographs, and in many cases the data needs to be shared. "Ultimately, bibliographic links between datasets and papers are a necessary step if the culture of the scientific and research community as a whole is to shift towards data sharing, increasing the rapidity and transparency with which science advances."

This guide has identified a set of requirements for dataset citations and any services set up to support them. Citations must be able to uniquely identify the object cited, identify the whole dataset and subsets as well.  The citation must be able to be used by people and software tools alike.  There are a number of elements needed, but the "most important of these elements – the ones that should be present in any citation – are the author, the title and date, and the location. These give due credit, allow the reader to judge the relevance of the data, and permit access the data, respectively."  A persistent url is needed, and there are several types that can be used. 

Audit And Certification Of Trustworthy Digital Repositories.

Audit And Certification Of Trustworthy Digital Repositories. CCSDS. September 2011. [PDF, 77pp.]

The Management Council of the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) has published this manual of recommended practices. It is based on the 2003 version from RLG. “The purpose of this document is to define a CCSDS Recommended Practice on which to base an audit and certification process for assessing the trustworthiness of digital repositories. The scope of application of this document is the entire range of digital repositories.”

The document addresses audit and certification criteria, organizational infrastructure, digital object management, and risk management.  It is a standard for those who audit repositories; and, for those who are responsible for the repositories, it is an objective tool they can use to evaluate the trustworthiness of the repository.

National Archives Digitization Tools Now on GitHub

National Archives Digitization Tools Now on GitHub. NARAtions. October 18, 2011.
The National Archives has begun to share applications developed in-house to facilitate digitization workflows. These applications have significantly increased the productivity and improved the accuracy and completeness of the digitization.Two digitization applications, “File Analyzer and Metadata Harvester” and “Video Frame Analyzer” are publicly available on GitHub.

• File Analyzer and Metadata Harvester: This allows a user to analyze the contents of a file system or external drive and generate statistics about the contents, generate checksums, and verify that there is a one-to-one match of before and after files. The File Analyzer can import data in a spreadsheet, and can match and merge results with auxiliary data from an external spreadsheet or finding aid.
• Video Frame Analyzer: This is used to objectively analyze technical properties of individual frames of a video file in order to detect quality issues within digitized video files.  It reduced the time to do quality checks by 50%. 

Research Librarians Consider the Risks and Rewards of Collaboration.

Research Librarians Consider the Risks and Rewards of Collaboration. Jennifer Howard. The Chronicle of Higher Education. October 16, 2011.

Association of Research Libraries’ meeting discussed research and preservation projects like the HathiTrust digital repository and the proposed Digital Public Library of America, plans for which are moving ahead. Concerning the Digital Public Library of America: “Library” is a misnomer in this case, which is more of a federation of existing objects. It wouldn’t own anything. The main contribution would be to set standards and link resources.  “The user has to drive this.”

They said that it’s almost three times more expensive to store materials locally than it is to store them with HathiTrust. Researchers now also create and share digital resources themselves via social-publishing sites such as Scribd. There is a need for collection-level tools that allow scholars and curators to see beyond catalog records.

Discussed Recollection, a free platform built by NDIIPP and a company named Zepheira to give a better “collection-level view” of libraries’ holdings. The platform can be used to build interactive maps, timelines, and other interfaces from descriptive metadata and other information in library catalogs. So, for instance, plain-text place names on a spreadsheet can be turned into points of latitude and longitude and plotted on a map.

“Rebalancing the Investment in Collections,” discussed that libraries had painted themselves into a corner by focusing too much on their collection budgets. Investing in the right skills and partnerships is most critical now. “The comprehensive and well-crafted collection is no longer an end in itself.”

On person told librarians that they shouldn’t rush to be the first to digitize everything and invest in every new technology. “Everybody underestimates the cost of innovation,” he said. “Instead of rushing in and participating in a game where you don’t have the muscle, you want to stand back” and wait for the right moment.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Digital Preservation-Friendly File Formats for Scanned Images.

Digital Preservation-Friendly File Formats for Scanned Images.  Bill LeFurgy. The Signal. October 12, 2011.

Some digital file formats are better for preservation than others.  The best format for preservation is one where the content can be viewable accurately regardless of changes in hardware, software or other technical changes. The Library of Congress has created a web resource to help in selecting file formats, and which will help in understanding how effective formats for long-term preservation.

• Disclosure of specifications and tools for validating technical integrity
• Adoption by the primary creators and users of information resources
• Openness to direct basic and non-propriety tools
• Self-documentation of metadata needed to render the data as usable information or understand its context
• Degree to which the format depends on specific hardware, operating system, or software for rendering the information and how difficult that may be.
• Extent that licenses or patents may inhibit the ability to sustain content.
• Technical protection mechanisms. Embedded capabilities to restrict use in order to protect the intellectual property.

 Using these factors has helped determine formats that may be more sustainable than others. 

To Save and Project Fest: Long Live Cinema!

To Save and Project Fest: Long Live Cinema!  J. Hoberman. The Village Voice. October 12, 2011.
Digital might be the future of the motion-picture medium, but for film preservation, it’s a mixed blessing. Archivists make it clear that digital technology is part of the solution—and part of the problem. Digital cinema is itself difficult to preserve, subtly distorts (by “improving”) the celluloid image, even as it often dictates (through commercial considerations) those movies deemed worthy of preservation. New York Times DVD critic Dave Kehr has pointed out that instead of increasing access, each new distribution platform (from 35mm to 16mm, VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, and online streaming) has narrowed the range of titles in active distribution and diminished the proportion of available films. Film restoration is also the restoration of cultural memory.

Tim O'Reilly - Keynote for 2011 NDIIPP/NDSA Partners Meeting.

Tim O'Reilly - Keynote for 2011 NDIIPP/NDSA Partners Meeting. Tim O'Reilly. Library of Congress website.  October 7, 2011.
This is a 31 minute video talking about digital preservation. The things that turn out to be historic often are not thought of being historic at the time. You can’t necessarily do preservation from the institution level.  You have to teach the preservation mindset. Like Wikipedia; it is designed to keep all earlier versions. We should think about what kind of tools we need to build digital preservation into our everyday activities.

There will be a whole new dimension to digital. Imagine what will happen in situations if only digital books and maps are available and then they become unavailable.  That world may be closer than we think. Imagine a world if there are no print books. What would you need to keep the digital materials available?  It turns out that digital actually increases the manufacturing cost of books.   We need to have tools with digital preservation designed in, not necessarily in the way we think of scholarly preservation, but in terms of increasing the likelihood that things will survive. 

What should the web’s memory look like? There is an obligation to preserve the things that matter. We are engaged in the wholesale destruction of our history because we aren’t thinking about what we do as important to our descendants. Think of yourselves as people who are engaged in a task that matters to everyone.  As we move into an increasingly digital world, preservation won’t be just the concern of specialists, but of everyone. One of the arguments for open source is simply to preserve the code.  There have been a number of examples of technical companies not having their source code after they stop supporting it. Preserving everything may get in the way of our preserving the things that are important.

Innovation, Disruption and the Democratization of Digital Preservation

Innovation, Disruption and the Democratization of Digital Preservation. Bill LeFurgy. Agogified. October 10, 2011.

Interesting article about innovation and society.  It asks the question about digital preservation: Is innovation the key to dealing with all that valuable digital data? "When considered from the popular perspective of innovation, digital preservation looks like a straightforward challenge for libraries, archives, museums and other entities that long have kept information on behalf of society." But it isn't that easy, since technology changes much faster than society's conventions and institutions. "Innovation is not a safe, orderly or controllable process.  It sends out big ripples of disruption with an unpredictable impact." Libraries are being bounced around because of such disruption and the traditional methods are not suited to address the changes.  "All this means that the ability of traditional institutions to fully meet the need for digital preservation is in doubt."

But with these changes comes a change in the people playing a role in preserving digital materials. Some see a greater role for individuals in digital preservation.  There is a great need for designing preservation functionality into tools used to create and distribute digital content to enable content creators to be involved in the digital stewardship. "Ultimately, we have to hope that innovation pushes along the trend toward the democratization of digital preservation.  The more people who care about saving digital content, and the easier it is for them to save it, the more likely it is that bits will be preserved and kept available."

Abingdon firm gets Queen's seal of approval

Abingdon firm gets Queen's seal of approval. Oxford Journal.  22 September 2011.
Tessella has been awarded one of the UK’s most prestigious business awards for their collaboration with a public sector organization in developing a unique system for preserving digital information.  Their product, Safety Deposit box which came out in 2003, is now used by governments in seven countries.

Piggybacking to Avoid Going Down the Rabbit Hole, or What I Learned at the First DPOE Workshop.

Piggybacking to Avoid Going Down the Rabbit Hole, or What I Learned at the First DPOE Workshop. Sam Meister. The Signal. October 7, 2011.
This is an excellent post about the Digital Preservation Outreach and Education (DPOE) initiative’s first ever Train the Trainer Baseline Workshop and the experience gained there.  The workshop went over the core principles and concepts (Audience, Content, Instructors, Events) and the six modules that make up the curriculum (Identify, Select, Store, Protect, Manage, Provide). The group of 24 trainers broke into six regional groups to work through the modules and develop specific strategies to present the material of individual modules. "As the first group of trainers to review, analyze, revise and disseminate this curriculum, the result of a multi-year development process, we would be the “pioneers” for the DPOE program. To me, this made clear the role and level of responsibility that would be expected of us throughout the rest of the workshop and beyond."

New Guidelines: CrossRef DOIs to be Displayed as URLS.

New Guidelines: CrossRef DOIs to be Displayed as URLS. Carol Anne Meyer. D-Lib Magazine. September/October 2011.
CrossRef, a not-for-profit association of more than 1000 scholarly publishers, revised its recommendations for CrossRef Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to specifies that DOIs on the web use a URL format. The previous practice of putting "doi:" in the ID is discontinued, and also that publishers create DOIs that are as short as possible.

From Link Rot to Web Sanctuary: Creating the Digital Educational Resource Archive (DERA).

From Link Rot to Web Sanctuary: Creating the Digital Educational Resource Archive (DERA). Bernard M. Scaife. Ariadne. July 2011.
One of the tasks was to fix the broken links in the catalogue. A report showed that of about 16,000 links to external resources, about 1,200 were non-functional (7.5%).  There were ways to fix many of these, but about 10% of the links referred to documents which no longer existed.  Many of these were government publications. The question was how to do this differently. They looked at adding materials into their own repository, which would allow them to solve the link rot problem while "building in a core level of digital preservation and increasing the discoverability of these documents. We were convinced that a citation which linked to a record in a Web archive was far more likely to survive than one which did not."

They needed to clarify the intellectual property rights, add descriptive metadata, such as the type of document, a collection name, subjects, and the organization that created the document.  They also found that they "had to accept all common file formats at present. In practice, the majority are pdf, some MS Word and a few Excel files. It would, for preservation purposes, be preferable to convert and ingest in PDF/A format, at least for the textual formats. However our view was that the small overhead of batch migrating to that format at a later stage means it would be better to spend time upfront now on metadata rather than file conversion. We felt that this was a pragmatic response which meant that we would be working within the spirit of digital preservation best practice." Also, they found that "data-based formats such as Excel cannot be meaningfully integrated into a full-text search and that these objects would benefit from better representations." 

Other things they learned include    

• Placing files in a repository gives digital preservation to key documents in the subject field and eradicates the link rot problem.
• Adding high-quality metadata enhances the resource and allows it to hold its head high and become an integral part of a library's collection.
• A library can play an important role in preserving content as part of its long-term strategy and ensure high-quality resources remain available.
• The added value of being able to search the full text provides a potentially very rich resource for researchers.

Future plans are to build up content levels and to integrate these resources with the regular library content,

More (digital) wake-up calls for academic libraries

More (digital) wake-up calls for academic libraries. Rick Luce. LIBER 2011. Duurzame toegang blog. June 2011.
The topic was the core business of academic libraries: serving researchers and the scientific research process. There are many changes taking place in the sciences: "zetabytes of data; dynamic, complex data objects that require management; communities and data flows becoming much more important than static library collections, etc." The warning to academic libraries was that if libraries do not develop those services the new researcher needs, someone else will, and then there is no future for the research library. We need a "fundamental transformation process that will affect every aspect of the ‘library’ business."  The library needs to provide a repository between the scientific process and IT infrastructure that supports and preserves workflows.

Graduates To Sow Seeds of New Training Program Across U.S.

Graduates To Sow Seeds of New Training Program Across U.S.  Bill LeFurgy.  The Signal. October 3, 2011.
The inaugural class of  digital preservation training workshop was held at the Library of Congress on  September 20-23.  The 24 professionals were selected from a nationwide pool. The DPOE Workshop was a workshop model designed to produce a national corps of trainers equipped to teach others basic principles and practices of preserving digital materials. “What’s unique about this workshop,” said George Coulbourne, Executive Program Manager, “is that we designed it for people who are going to be actual practitioners of digital preservation. This is not for administrators or managers, but for the novice practitioner. It’s also intended to be as open-source and low-cost as possible.  We hope this event accelerates a new national movement in open, accessible digital-preservation training.”
Those who were trained will take back and present what they learned in their home regions, including by holding one or more training events in digital preservation by mid-2012.

ADS and the Data Seal of Approval – case study for the DCC.

The ADS and the Data Seal of Approval – case study for the DCC.  Jenny Mitcham and Catherine Hardman. Digital Curation Centre website. 2010.  

This page describes the experience of Archaeology Data Service in applying for the Data Seal of Approval (DSA). It provides some practical information about the DSA application process and outlines issues the ADS faced in undertaking the process, and several potential benefits they see from the self-certification.

“When undertaking to curate data for the foreseeable future (and beyond) the concept of ‘trust’ is of paramount importance. Yet in a young discipline such as digital archiving, it is very difficult to demonstrate the potential for longevity of curation.”

The Assessment Manual can be downloaded from the DSA website, which includes details of the 16 guidelines, the minimum requirements, and some guidance notes.  In the spirit of the openness the DSA recommends that the main policy and procedure documents should be accessible the world at large.  One of the benefits mention is it shows to users and depositors that the archive has a set of standards is meeting them.

Fujitsu CTO: Flash is just a stopgap

Fujitsu CTO: Flash is just a stopgap. Chris Mellor. The Register. 8 August 2011.
Flash memory according to the CTO is "beset with problems that will become unsolvable". The increases in flash density come at the expense of the ability to read and write data. "Each shrink in process geometry, from 3X to 2X and onto 1X, shortens flash's endurance", and brings its additional problems of access speed and endurance.

Tomorrow will be too late – (born) digital in library special collections.

Tomorrow will be too late – (born) digital in library special collections. 28 June 2011.

Report from the annual conference of LIBER, the Association of European Research Libraries: It appears that according to recent studies, research libraries are still functioning within an analogue paradigm. Many libraries have digitized collections and provide online access, but their digitization efforts “mostly lack strategic planning, access is still mostly provided in a controlled way (for a limited group of users), preservation issues are still not being addressed adequately, and born-digital material (including audiovisual content) is blatently missing from collections and collection plans.”  If libraries stay in their comfort zone of digital access in a controlled network, their information role will become insignificant.  They need:

• A knowledge of the user groups and their behaviours
• Content, access, and preservation strategies
• Strategic alliances
• Permanent innovation
• An open mind

 There are opportunities for libraries but they need to transition their methods.

Google helps put Dead Sea Scrolls online

Google helps put Dead Sea Scrolls online. BBC News.  26 September 2011.

Ultra-high resolution images of several Dead Sea Scrolls are now available on line.  Five scrolls have been digitized (1,200 megapixel images); they are The Temple Scroll, The War Scroll, The Community Rule Scroll, The Great Isaiah Scroll, and The Commentary of Habakkuk Scroll.  

Practical Approaches to Electronic Records: What Works Now (ppt)

Practical Approaches to Electronic Records: What Works Now.  Chris Prom, et al. August 30, 2011.
This is a PowerPoint of a presentation given by several people at SAA.  A few notes from the slides:
Adjectives that are undesirable when describing an archive: Undercounted, undermanaged, inaccessible.
Basic requirements for the digital archive:

• Perform a virus check
• Capture descriptive metadata about the folders and files
• Document the file formats
• Record checksums for the files
• Document the actions taken over time

Meeting the Challenge of Media Preservation: Strategies and Solutions.

Meeting the Challenge of Media Preservation: Strategies and Solutions." Indiana University Bloomington. September 2011. (128 page pdf.)
This excellent study is the result of a year of research and planning to address the problems an earlier report in 2009.  It looks at the preservation and conservation of audio, video, and film, including: guiding preservation principles, facility planning, prioritization, digitization methodologies, strategies for film, principles for access, technological infrastructure needs, and engagement with campus units and priorities. It is specifically for the university, but the information and recommendations are of interest to others.  Their mission is to preserve the time-based media holdings of Indiana University so that they may be accessible. They estimate their media holdings at more than 560,000 audio, video, and film objects, and nearly all on obsolete formats. And they estimate they only have a  fifteen- to twenty-year window of opportunity to digitally preserve audio and video holdings. They propose to collect rich descriptive and technical metadata to support digitization and future interpretation and management of digital content.

• The media preservation crisis impacts every institution with media collections.
• Because campus holdings are very large and time pressures great, even high-efficiency workflows may not preserve everything in time. 
• Not every recording is an appropriate candidate for long-term preservation.
• Research, instruction, curation, and public availability are core university missions supported by media preservation efforts.
• Access is the end goal of any preservation work, and it must be developed in tandem with
  media preservation efforts.
• Access to preserved holdings is critical to the success of the project and to the realization of its value to the campus.
• The vision is an era characterized by a wealth of media content preserved long term and made accessible and integrated into campus research and instruction.
• We live in a watershed moment in which acute challenges demand a coordinated effort to address dramatic technological and cultural changes in the way users access time-based media.
• Target: high resolution audio preservation and production masters—24 bit, 96 kHz sample rate.

Some recommendations are that a 10,000-square-foot Indiana Media Preservation and Access Center is built employing 25 staff: administrators, audio and video engineers, film specialists, processing technicians, and IT support. The annual output is projected at 2-3PB of data per year with a total fifteen-year target of 39PB of data storage.  The first year of work will be focused on developing solutions to the challenges posed by legacy media. The second year will begin developing management strategies and workflows for file-based born digital recordings.

Their guiding principles include: Curatorial Responsibility; Standards and Best Practices; Online Accessibility; Description Services; usability of metadata; copyright strategies; Access Digitizing and Preservation. Their efforts need to be combined into a trusted digital repository.  "Preservation metadata requirements need to be defined, and tools need to be developed to support audio and video preservation package validation, technical metadata capture, and repository ingest."

This is a long study but is well worth the time to read all the way through it.   This university link also includes other related materials, such as the media preservation survey, and a brochure "Our History is at Risk".

Library of Congress To Launch New Corps of Digital Preservation Trainers. Library of Congress.

Library of Congress To Launch New Corps of Digital Preservation Trainers. Library of Congress.  The Signal.  September 16, 2011. Bill LeFurgy.
The Digital Preservation Outreach and Education program at the Library of Congress will hold its first national train-the-trainer workshop on September 20-23, 2011, in Washington, DC.

The DPOE Baseline Workshop will produce a corps of trainers who are equipped to teach others, in their home regions across the U.S., the basic principles and practices of preserving digital materials. Examples of such materials include websites; emails; digital photos, music, and videos; and official records. The intent of the workshop is to share high-quality training in digital preservation, based upon a standardized set of core principles, across the nation.

Long-term Preservation for Spatial Data Infrastructures: a Metadata Framework and Geo-portal Implementation.

Long-term Preservation for Spatial Data Infrastructures: a Metadata Framework and Geo-portal Implementation. Arif Shaon, Andrew Woolf. D-Lib Magazine. September/October 2011.
Geospatial data is increasing, particularly with diverse environmental datasets. Long-term preservation of the data is not typically addressed, but it is very important for current and future use.  Sustained access to environmental data is becoming more important and more difficult because it is increasing so dramatically.
Without effective long-term preservation, the data face the risk of becoming unusable over time. This article looks at the requirements, particularly metadata, for preserving this data.  The authors have implemented a web-based portal prototype that demonstrates some functions of a preservation interface, such as data discovery using geospatial metadata, data downloading, metadata creation and validation.  There is more to be done in this area.

Preserving Your Personal Digital Memories

This is a free online course on preserving your personal digital materials: photos, documents, and other media.  These are fragile and require special care to keep them useable. But preserving digital information is a new concept that most people have little experience with. As new technologies appear for creating and saving our personal digital information, older ones become obsolete, making it difficult to access older content. Learn about the problem with digital preservation of materials and hear about some simple, practical tips and tools to help you keep digital files safe.

Evaluating Open Source Digital Preservation Systems: A Case Study.

Evaluating Open Source Digital Preservation Systems: A Case Study.  Angela Jordan. Practical E-Records. August 18, 2011.
The University of Illinois Archives has implemented the “Practical E-Records Method,” a project that provides recommendations to help  make digital curation and digital preservation systematic institutional functions.  They tested Archivematica, which is essentially "an Ubuntu (Linux) distribution with extensions to support digital preservation actions using a web-based preservation dashboard."  The test "started with elementary electronic records such as Microsoft Office documents and PDFs, then moved to complicated, larger file types, such as audio-visual objects."  Some parts worked well, but there were a number of errors.  "Given the immediate needs of the University Archives, the developing state of Archivematica, and other digital preservation development work taking place within the University Library, we chose not to incorporate the current version into our electronic records work flow."

 There were three remaining concerns:

1. smaller institutions may lack the hardware or the technological capability to support the system
2. the installation process is not user friendly
3. the software is best run from a dedicated virtual server, to which many institutions may not have access.  Running Archivematica on a dedicated virtual machine requires significant help from IT

The technological ability needed to successfully install and run this system is currently beyond the people who might benefit most. Once some of the issues are worked out in upcoming versions, Archivematica will be useful for smaller institutions that have less IT support than a large research library.

KRDS Digital Preservation Benefits Analysis Toolkit and KRDS Updates now available.

KRDS Digital Preservation Benefits Analysis Toolkit and KRDS Updates now available. Neil Beagrie. Website.  05 Aug 2011.
The Keeping Research Data Safe (KRDS) project  was set up to show the benefits of digital preservation.  The Digital Preservation Benefits Analysis toolkit, now available, has two tools which consist of a detailed guide and worksheet(s):

1. KRDS Benefits Framework:  an “entry-level” tool requiring less experience and effort to implement and which can also be used as a stand-alone tool for many tasks
2. Value-chain and Benefits Impact tool: a more advanced tool requiring more experience and effort to implement. It is likely to be most useful in activities such as evaluation and strategic planning.

The site also has worksheets, guidance documentation and exemplar test cases.

Research Archive Widens Its Public Access—a Bit

Research Archive Widens Its Public Access—a Bit. Editorial. Technology Review.  7 September 2011.
JStor, an organization which maintains link to 1,400 journals for subscribing institutions, is providing free public access to articles published prior to 1923 in the United States or before 1870 in other countries, about 6 percent of its content. In a letter to publishers and libraries, JStor refers to plans for "further access to individuals in the future."

Atempo Digital Archive Helps Simplify and Streamline Broadcast Workflows With Scalable Storage Integration.

Atempo Digital Archive Helps Simplify and Streamline Broadcast Workflows With Scalable Storage Integration. Press release. Sept. 8, 2011.
Announcement that Atempo Digital Archive (ADA) has been integrated with MediaGrid, to simplify and streamline broadcast workflows. The software addresses long-term data retention requirements and digital preservation. "Atempo enables organizations to preserve and protect digital information simply and effectively, across any infrastructure, on any platform, over long periods of time. Atempo's comprehensive archiving solutions deliver policy-based and workflow-driven management of rich media files, email and other high-value digital assets to maximize the efficiency and performance of storage systems and reduce long-term storage costs."

Paper on JPEG 2000 for preservation

Paper on JPEG 2000 for preservation. Johan van der Knijff.  National Library of the Netherlands (KB). Johans blog. Open Planets Foundation.  June 2011.  This paper, published in D-Lib Magazine, looks at the suitability of the JP2 format for long-term digital preservation.  He identifies issues will be addressed in an amendment to the standard.  It also provides some practical recommendations that may help in mitigating the risks for existing collections.

A simple JP2 file structure checker

A simple JP2 file structure checker. Johan van der Knijff.  National Library of the Netherlands (KB). Johans blog. Open Planets Foundation.  1 September 2011.
The KB is planning to migrate a collection of  TIFF images to JP2. One major risk of such a migration is that hardware failures during the migration process may result in corrupted images. Others have found that corrupted, incomplete JP2 files can still be see as "well-formed and valid" by JHOVE.  This tool was written to detect incomplete code streams in JP2 files.  There are links to the source code of jp2StructCheck, some documentation, and a small data set with some test images. This will be an important tool for digital preservation.

JISC Legal Cloud Computing and the Law Toolkit.

JISC Legal Cloud Computing and the Law Toolkit. Website. 31 August 2011.
Documents to help make informed decisions about implementing cloud computing solutions in an  institution. Not specifically for digital preservation, but helpful to think about the policies that will affect data and the life-cycle, such as Data Protection, Possession of Data on Termination, etc.  Written for UK educational institutions.

• Report on Cloud Computing and the Law for UK Further and Higher Education
• User Guide: Cloud Computing and the Law for IT
• User Guide: Cloud Computing and the Law for Senior Management and Policy Makers
• User Guide: Cloud Computing and the Law for Users 
• User Guide: Cloud Computing Contracts, SLAs and Terms & Conditions of Use 

Institutional Repository and ETD Bibliography 2011

Institutional Repository and ETD Bibliography 2011. Charles W. Bailey, Jr.  September 2011.
This bibliography has over 600 English-language articles, books, and other works about institutional repositories and theses and dissertations (ETDs).  Among other things, it includes digital preservation issues, IR library issues, IR metadata strategies, and institutional open access mandates and policies. Most sources have been published from 2000 through June 30, 2011.  The bibliography includes links to freely available versions of included works.  It is available as a PDF file.

Memory failure detected.

Memory failure detected. THE: Times Higher Education. 1 September 2011.
In the future, researchers will have an incomplete record about events taking place in our day: much of the material was never stored or has been only partially archived.  The extent to which content disappears without trace from the web is worrying. Not enough academics are engaging with the topic. "We are taking it for granted that such material will be there, but we need to be attentive. We have a responsibility to future generations of researchers."  "These issues are long term and worthy of investment," The Internet Archive is the most comprehensive of the web archives with more than 150 billion pages from more than 100 million sites [but these are often only partial pages].

There are also smaller-scale selective archives. Websites are collected around topics, themes or events chosen by library curators, with sites harvested only when the copyright holder's permission has been obtained. The approach lacks breadth, but as the operation is smaller, individual websites can be captured more comprehensively. Most news content that is published only online is simply falling through the cracks. "But the web archiving community's current practices, the report continues, are producing something that is in danger of ending up as a "dusty archive". In this scenario, archiving technology keeps pace with the latest developments and archives are well curated and maintained, but they sit largely unused, gathering "digital dust". "As is too often the case with those who build resources, they are preserving websites without giving any real thought to how they might be used in the future."