Audiovisual Metadata Platform Planning Project: Progress Report and Next Steps

Audiovisual Metadata Platform (AMP) Planning Project: Progress Report and Next Steps. Jon W. Dunn, et al. Indiana University. March 28, 2018.
     This is a report of a workshop which was part of a planning project for design and development of an audiovisual metadata platform. "The platform will perform mass description of audiovisual content utilizing automated mechanisms linked together with human labor in a recursive and reflexive workflow to generate and manage metadata at scale for libraries and archives." 

Libraries and archives hold massive collections of audiovisual recordings from a diverse range of timeframes, cultures, and contexts that are of great interest across many disciplines and communities. Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums (GLAM) face difficulty in creating access to their audiovisual collections, due to high costs, difficulty in managing the objects, and the lack of sufficiently granular metadata for audio/video content to support discovery, identification, and use. Text materials can use full-text indexing to provide some degree of discovery, but "without metadata detailing the content of the dynamic files, audiovisual materials cannot be located, used, and ultimately, understood".  Metadata generation for audiovisual recordings rely almost entirely on manual description performed by experts in a variety of ways. The AMP will need to process audio and video files to extract metadata, and also accept / incorporate metadata from supplementary documents.  One major challenge is processing and moving large files around, both in terms of time and bandwidth costs.

The report goes into depth on the AMP business requirements, some of which are:

• Automate analysis of audiovisual content and human-generated metadata in a variety of formats to efficiently generate a rich set of searchable, textual attributes
• Offer streamlined metadata creation by leveraging multiple, integrated, best-of-breed software tools in a single workflow
• Produce and format metadata with minimal errors 
• Build a community of developers in the cultural heritage community who can develop and support AMP on an ongoing basis 
• Scale to efficiently process multi-terabyte batches of content 
• Support collaborative efforts with similar initiatives

The following formats are possible sources for AMP processing:

• Audio (.mp3, .wav) 
• Image (.eps, .jpg, .pdf, .png, .tif) 
• Data (.xlsx, .csv, .ttl, .json) 
• Presentation (.key, .pptx) 
• Video (.mov, .mp4, .mkv, .mts, .mxf) 
• Structured text (.xml, with or without defined schemas, such as TEI, MODS, EAD, MARCXML) 
• Unstructured text (.txt, .docx)

The report continues by looking at the Proposed System Architecture, functional requirements, and workflows.
Outcome: "The AMP workshop successfully gathered together a group of experts to talk about what would be needed to perform mass description of audiovisual content utilizing automated mechanisms linked together with human labor in a recursive and reflexive workflow to generate and manage metadata at scale for libraries and archives. The workshop generated technical details regarding the software and computational components needed and ideas for tools to use and workflows to implement to make this platform a reality."

Digital Preservation Matters.

The PKP Preservation Network: A Free, Sustainable Preservation Service for OJS Journals

The PKP Preservation Network: A Free, Sustainable Preservation Service for OJS Journals. Bronwen Sprout and Mark Jordan. Poster, iPres 2018. 
     The PKP Preservation Network offers free preservation to any journal running Open Journal Systems (OJS) that has an ISSN. As of September 2018, 856 journals have deposited 22,549 issues into the network. The network is administered by the Public Knowledge Project and supported by partners who are running preservation nodes, along with an Advisory Panel. Future development will allow it to preserve supplemental and linked content

Journal deposit into the dark archive is fully automated through an OJS plugin. The content is harvested and processed by a staging server and then stored in a LOCKSS network.  In case of a trigger event, a journal's content will be republished for public access.

PKP Preservation Network

Digital Preservation Matters.

How State CIOs Should Preserve Digital Records -- Electronic records are at risk and vulnerable

How State CIOs Should Preserve Digital Records. Phil Goldstein. November 05, 2018.
     States are not well prepared for long-term preservation of digital records, which means the electronic records are at risk and vulnerable. State governments are living in the world of digital records, which has many challenges with preserving content. The records are essential for state governments and must be preserved 

• Electronic records require attention to ensure they are preserved and accessible. They are more complex to preserve than paper records
• “Sustained attention and resources are needed to ensure the long-term management and accessibility of our nation’s electronic records.”
• Collaboration is key, since digital records management involve multiple organizations.  “Collaborative effort is key to developing and adopting best practices and sustainable models for the long-term preservation of electronic records,”
• “adequate employee awareness and training activities are keys to ensuring that employees correctly carry out new or existing policies and procedures and understand how to use any new technologies associated with improved electronic records management.”
•  “Establishing fixity, or the property of a digital file or object being fixed or unchanged, is a critical part of confirming evidentiary status of electronic records,”
• some systems for document management don’t preserve the content, structure, context and integrity of the record over time.  “States must select technologies that properly manage and store electronic records, while ensuring that the inevitable obsolescence of the technology does not compromise the records’ integrity or accessibility,” 
• “The need for digital preservation of state electronic records will outlast commercial service providers and current technological infrastructures. The state needs to clearly understand its rights regarding its data and how the preservation provider is helping it perform its obligations to its citizens.”
• State CIOs can help state archives and records management personnel perform a cost-benefit analysis about outsourcing preservation services in relation to data security, the report says. 
• Contracts with third-party digital preservation service providers should “establish responsibility for functions that are critical to ensuring the integrity of state data including fixity checking and audits or compliance with state government legal responsibilities,” according to the report. 
• State CIOs and archivists should also establish audit trails when working with a third-party preservation service provider. “A verifiable audit trail of the activities involved in the processing of digital records ensures that the reliability and authenticity of the data is secure,” the report says. 

Digital Preservation Matters.

Announcing the Digital Processing Framework

Announcing the Digital Processing Framework. Erin Faulder, et al. bloggERS! November 13, 2018.   [PDF]

     The Digital Processing Framework suggests a minimum processing method for digital archival content. The framework brings together archival processing practice and digital preservation activities. The intention is to  promote consistent practices and to establish common terminologies.  A few of the 23 framework activities are: 

• Survey the collection
• Capture digital content off physical media
• Create checksums for transfer, preservation, and access copies
• Determine level of description
• Identify restricted material based on copyright/donor agreement
• Gather metadata for description
• Organize electronic files according to intellectual arrangement
• Perform file format analysis
• Identify deleted/temporary/system files
• Manage personally identifiable information (PII) risk
• Normalize files

There is a reusable Excel version of the framework as well. The framework is for people who "process born digital content in an archival setting and are looking for guidance in creating processing guidelines and making level-of-effort decisions for collections."  It was designed to be practical, usable, and adaptable to local institutional settings.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Perspectives on the Changing Ecology of Digital Preservation

Perspectives on the Changing Ecology of Digital Preservation. Oya Y. Rieger. Ithaka S+R New Issue Brief. October 29, 2018.
     Our cultural, historic, and scientific heritage is increasingly being produced and shared in digital forms, which raises questions about the role of research libraries and archives in digital preservation. The purpose of this report is to share some common themes and provide an opportunity for broader community involvement. Interviews were conducted to identify opportunities and needs and focuses on gaps and challenges, in order to explore how we can strengthen collaborations. "Digital preservation involves the management and maintenance of digital objects to ensure the authenticity, accuracy, and functionality of content over time in the face of technological and administrative changes."  A critical issue expressed: “The main risk is that one assumes that ‘somebody else’ will take care of the digital information.”

The following questions framed the discussions:

• What seems to be working well now (in which areas have we seen significant progress)?
• What are your thoughts on how the preservation community is preparing for new content types and formats?
• Do you have any observations about new research workflows and practices and their potential impact on the future of the scholarly record?
• What do you see as gaps or areas that need further attention? 
• If you were writing a new preservation research or implementation grant, what would you focus on?

Some notes and quotes from the article that are important to consider:

• The digital preservation community is getting larger, representing deeper expertise around a wide range of digital content types. 
• Through several digital preservation and repository conferences and organizations, there is a robust exchange of best practices, standards, and preservation technique.
• There is now significant experience in implementing preservation strategies such as normalization, refreshing, migration, and emulation as the community of practitioners successfully moved these techniques from theory to practice.
• The development and adoption of shared standards, (such as OAIS, PREMIS, PRONOM) have helped the access, discovery, management, and preservation of digital resources.
• There are now a range of digital repository architectures and open source collaborations to provide open and scalable technical infrastructures for libraries and archives.

Challenges in Need of Further Research and Action:

Organizations and Leadership

• The role of research libraries is unclear as academic libraries are no longer perceived as critical drivers and leaders of digital preservation.
• how to provide sufficient levels of digital preservation to meet the community’s needs.
• the role of research libraries in digital preservation needs to be redefined  
• It is difficult to preserve content that is not “owned” or “controlled” by libraries.
•  library leaders have “shifted their attention from seeing preservation as a moral imperative to catering to the university’s immediate needs.” 
• "Several wondered what arguments could convince provosts and other senior university leaders to invest in digital preservation."
•  with the increasing influence of commercial and industrial actors, “the digital preservation community is becoming more diverse and the distinctive requirements of research libraries are not as dominant as they perhaps once were in the community.”
• “Expertise is increasingly fragmented as web archiving, digital curation, research data, repositories, and special collections are often placed in different library units without a common preservation mandate.” 
• there seems to be some disconnect between how the top leadership level (University Librarians, Associate University Librarian) perceives preservation priorities and needs versus curators, digital collection specialists, archivists, and other specialists. 
• it is important for specialists, such as curators and archivists, to have a grounded understanding of how their specific roles and priorities fit into the overall strategies of libraries and cultural heritage institutions.
• concern about how digital preservation activities are being slowed down or impeded due to politics and conflicts both within and outside of organizations.

Preservation Services and Program Areas

• There is confusion about the purpose and business models of preservation services, and in how such services fit together in a comprehensive preservation service framework
• understanding about what’s being preserved and the associated technical, organizational, and policy issues is important for effective planning and implementation of a digital preservation program.
• storage does not equate to preservation
• there is a need to better understand the current storage options and costs, especially cloud storage
• "we need to be careful about relying on the university IT unit for building storage" since they will focus more on providing platforms and less on providing commodity storage 
• there are problems with legacy content that have not yet been resolved, including ejournals, ebooks, and Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)
• there is concern about the long-term sustainability and preservation of open access content, which is diverse and problematic
• there is a focus on initial identification, ingest, and description stages without a sufficient emphasis on how the archived content will be discovered, accessed, and used by scholars at the point of need in a usable and meaningful way
•  initiatives tend to focus on initial identification, ingest, and description stages without a sufficient emphasis on how the archived content will be discovered, accessed, and used 
• "It is difficult to justify collecting and preserving things if they aren’t providing value to your stakeholders.”

Assessment, Evaluation, and Risk Management

• There are questions about certification and self-audit so that we have a systematic and recurrent way of assessing progress and gaps
• there do not seem to be sufficient collaborative approaches to explore what constitutes success and how we identify and measure outcomes associated with digital preservation.
• “More candid discussions around loss and failure will promote openness and transparency in our community and help us with risk management."

The key to digital preservation is sustaining interactivity and variability to support future uses in addition to considering the core archival principles such as authenticity, fixity, and integrity.

Three overarching issues that may be fruitful to explore are:

1. A roadmap to guide the international community in understanding what digital preservation comprises, defining the key problems, identifying barriers limitations, and developing an action agenda accordingly.
2. Understanding the ownership, control, discovery and access of materials
3. What are the measurable benefits of digital preservation that can be presented as a communal responsibility that deserves funding?

Digital Preservation Matters.

Metadata for audio and videos

Metadata for audio and videos. Karen Smith-Yoshimura. OCLC: Hanging Together blog.
October 29, 2018.
     This post discusses a topic that is under discussion by a number of groups.
Our libraries are repositories of large amounts of audiovisual materials, which often represent unique, local collections. These issues need to be addressed. Chela Scott Weber: “For decades, A/V materials in our collections were largely either separated from related manuscript material (often shunted away to be dealt with at a later date) or treated at the item level. Both have served to create sizeable backlogs of un-quantified and un-described A/V materials.”
The result is that today, much of this audiovisual material is in dire need of preservation, digitization, clarification of conditions of use, and description.

AV materials, skill-sets and stakeholders are part of a complex environment. Managing AV resources requires knowledge of the use context and the technical metadata issues, in order to think through programs of description and access. It may help for libraries to identify the issues by the category of the AV materials:

•     Commercial AV: Licensing issues, old formats, and the quality of vendor records
•     Unique archival collections: Often deteriorating formats, large backlogs, lack of resources, and rare and expensive equipment that may be required to access (and assess) the files
•     Locally generated content: Desire for content-creators to describe own resources

How does a library decide the amount of effort to invest in describing these AV materials. Finding aids can provide useful contextual information for individual items within a specific collection, but they often lack important details needed for discovery of the items, specifically for legacy data.  Some hope that better discovery information will reduce the need to repeat the same information in different databases, but this would require using consistent access points across systems.

Institutions commonly prioritize which of their AV materials are to be described and preserved, assessing their importance through surveys and assigning priorities from inventories. These are often multi-divisional efforts.  Rights management issues can be very complex, but they are easier for new AV files acquired since rights management has become part of normal workflows. However, older materials may lack rights information.

Metadata for AV materials often include important technical information. Some have systems that have implemented PREMIS to support the preservation of digital objects, which helps with their AV materials.

This is an opportunity for institutions who have developed their own assessments and templates to share them with others and identify common practices and criteria.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Deadline 2025: collections at risk. -- "Tape that is not digitised by 2025 will in most cases be lost forever."

Deadline 2025: collections at risk. The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. August 2017. [PDF]
     This document is relevant for our own library as we increase our focus on video preservation in our collections. In this document, I consider digitization to mean digitization for preservation.

Some notes from the document:

• "There is now consensus among audiovisual archives internationally that we will not be able to support large‑scale digitisation of magnetic media in the very near future." 
• "Tape that is not digitised by 2025 will in most cases be lost forever."
•  Much of what is now this nation’s heritage originated in the analogue era of the 20th century and has been handed down on various magnetic tape formats.
• "All tape-based formats created in the 20th century are now obsolete. Tape that is not digitised by 2025, we risk losing forever. This creates a deadline, and a dilemma, for those entrusted with the care of these precious memories."
• At current rates, not all magnetic tape can be saved in time, meaning that much will of the cultural heritage will be lost to future generations. 
• "Considerable resources are required to ensure all surviving tape-based media is digitised and managed for
  long-term digital storage and access." 
• Quite a lot of our history on tape finishes up in landfill just because it is seldom valued at the time that decisions about its preservation are being made. 
• "Our audiovisual heritage is too precious to lose"

Many recordings, radio broadcasts and TV programs have already been lost. Recordings have been discarded or destroyed once their immediate broadcast life was deemed over, or erased to be reused, and some live radio and television programs were not recorded at all. In the next decade we stand to lose much of our vital cultural memory unless we act swiftly to invest in digitisation infrastructure and capability.

Some benefits of preserving these recordings are:

• The historical record connects us to who we were, and who we are. 
• The original content in many collections becomes accessible and it creates knowledge.  
• Making these resources discoverable and accessible provides a tangible return on the considerable investment in creating them.
• "Unlocking a treasure trove of images and sounds of the past will inspire creators of new works, and encourage" the creation of new content.
• These preservation projects will promote "specialised skills development and help retain expertise within the cultural sector and the audiovisual industries."

We are now in a better position to measure the positive impacts of digitising our collections with The Balanced Value Impact Model developed by Simon Tanner at King’s College, which "balances tangible gains from economic, social and innovation perspectives with harder to measure cultural values".  It is important to develop a framework for preserving audiovisual collections along with sufficient investment to ensure future access to and celebration of the at-risk collections. The digitisation costs are not disproportionate to the investment already made in the production, collection, storage and preservation of our audiovisual heritage. There is still time to avoid the "preventable loss of an irreplaceable part of our heritage."

Digital Preservation Matters.

Deep into that darkness peering: Our Dark Repository

Deep into that darkness peering: Our Dark Repository.  Lance Thomas Stuchell. Bits and Pieces. October 22, 2018.
     This is an interesting post about their dark archive and how it is being used. Their definition of a Dark Archive is: An archive that is inaccessible to the public. It is typically used for the preservation of content that is accessible elsewhere. For them, the “preservation of content that is accessible elsewhere” line is an important one. "Before we created a dark archive, all of our preservation systems were built for access, with many of them creating access copies (or DIPs, for all you OAIS groupies out there) on the fly from the preservation copy (AIPs) in the repository."

These systems worked for most of their digital material, but not for time-based digital media, such as video files, since they were too big to serve as access copies or be the source of on-the-fly access copy creation. The dark archive allows them to separate access from storage, and provides a place to preserve A/V preservation masters long-term.  Their  "Dark Blue" repository "provides long-term storage for A/V preservation masters and medium-term storage for forensic images/file transfers of born-digital archival accessions" and may be expanded in the future for data backups, perpetual access copies of licensed content, backups of video games, and web archives.

The dark archive workflow relies on other systems for metadata management and searchability, such as the catalog and ArchivesSpace. "We will continue to evaluate our storage strategy as the diversity and size of our digital collections grow, but right now Dark Blue fills an important void in our preservation strategy."

Digital Preservation Matters.

The Safeguarding of the Audiovisual Heritage: Ethics, Principles and Preservation Strategy

The Safeguarding of the Audiovisual Heritage: Ethics, Principles and Preservation Strategy: IASA-TC 03, Edition 4, 2017. The International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives. January 31, 2018.
     These are some notes from the latest revision of a core document for the audiovisual preservation community and provides principles and strategies for audio visual preservation. "The future of preserving digital material for the long term will be one of managing a pathway between the choices we make now and those choices we must make in the future. We must act decisively now even though we know that technological developments will not necessarily align with those choices. Though no choice is a final one, a well informed decision will consider the process for navigating to the new. Major changes in the current revision include a widening of scope to include moving image content, and a greater acknowledgement of the prevalence of file-based digital material alongside its carrier-based equivalent."

Preserving audiovisual material requires completing three related tasks:

1. Preserving the stability and optimal readability of the physical carrier through best practices.
2. Maintaining or renewing the technological system required to access the information.
3. Transferring the information to other sustainably accessible, file-based formats while there is still access to the original information.

• Audiovisual carriers are generally more vulnerable to loss of information than conventional materials due to damage caused by poor handling, poorly maintained equipment or by poor storage.
•  market-driven obsolescence of formats means there is a finite window of opportunity for digitally preserving carrier-based content
• efforts must be made to preserve carriers in useable condition for as long as is feasible.
• " the preservation of the document in the long term can only be achieved by copying the contents to new carriers/systems while this remains possible."
• "Separating the primary information from the original carrier raises the question of future authentication of the sound and images."
• Responsible preservation of digital data requires systems and a technical infrastructure, the monitoring of the condition of files, and the existence of plans for media migration and format migration." These topics are discussed in the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model (ISO 14721) and the Trusted Digital Repositories (ISO 16363).
• "It is strongly recommended that metadata be written according to established standards, in as consistent a fashion as possible"
• Generally, priority should be given to those documents that are at greatest risk, through either degradation or technical obsolescence
• "The archive must, therefore, keep itself and its employees updated with the latest scientific and technical information from the field of audiovisual archiving. This will include information concerning the extraction of both primary and secondary information from carriers, and improvements in preservation and restoration practices."

Digital Preservation Matters.

The 'Bit List' of Digitally Endangered Species

The 'Bit List' of Digitally Endangered Species. Digital Preservation Coalition. November, 2017.
     This list of Digitally Endangered materials is a community effort to discover which digital materials are most at risk, as well as those which are relatively safe thanks to digital preservation. This effort is to raise awareness of the need to preserve digital materials, but also "celebrate great digital preservation endeavors as entries become less of a ‘concern,’ whilst still highlighting the need for efforts to safeguard those still considered ‘critically endangered.’" The Risk Classifications and categories are:

• Lower Risk: Digital materials that do not meet the requirements for other categories but where there is a distinct preservation requirement.  Failure or removal of the preservation function would result in re-classification to one of the threatened categories.
• Vulnerable: Digital materials when the technical challenges to preservation are modest but responsibility for care is poorly understood, or where the responsible agencies are not meeting preservation needs.  
• Endangered: Digital materials that face material technical challenges to preservation or responsibility for care is poorly understood, or where the responsible agencies are poorly equipped to meet preservation needs.  
• Critically Endangered: Digital materials that face material technical challenges to preservation, there are no agencies responsible for them or those agencies are unwilling or unable to meet preservation needs.  
• Practically Extinct: Digital materials that are inaccessible by most practical means and methods.  
• Concern:  Digital materials where there is a preservation concern but they have not yet been assessed by BitList.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Libraries and the Preservation of Cultural Heritage: Building on the Past to Develop Our Future

Libraries and the Preservation of Cultural Heritage: Building on the Past to Develop Our Future. Chris Erickson. XXVII Congresso Brasileiro de Biblioteconomia, Documentação e Ciência da Informação. Fortaleza, Brazil. October 19, 2017.
     A few weeks ago I had the wonderful opportunity to visit Brazil and give this presentation on digital preservation at the Congresso Brasileiro de Biblioteconomia, Documentação e Ciência da Informação. Many thanks to Adriana Cybele Ferrari (FEBAB) and Anderson de Santana. The presentation provides an overview of digital preservation concepts as well as our approach to preservation and our workflow.

Digital Preservation Matters.

AFI, Library of Congress Celebrate 50 Years of Film Preservation

AFI, Library of Congress Celebrate 50 Years of Film Preservation. Penelope Poulou. Voice of America. November 14, 2017.
     The American Film Institute and the Library of Congress are partners in film preservation. The Library of Congress facility has an ongoing preservation process where technicians transfer films onto a sturdier polyester-type film material, which if stored properly can last for centuries. The digital conversion reaches wider audiences on a multi-platform basis, including streaming. "Not only are they archiving these movies, they are also circulating to television channels, television stations.
But the  Nitrate Film Vault manager says digital preservation may be an oxymoron.  “How do you save digital material? 'Cause digital as a rule is very iffy. You have only a couple of different ways you can store it, you can store it magnetically or optically or on a card, but none of those are permanent. Something can disrupt them and the stuff is gone.”

Whether stored in their original format or restored on newer film or digitally, the important thing is that these films are kept for posterity. “Film is a huge part of our history. And, if we don’t cherish it and preserve it, it will not be with us. So, we have to do that.”

Digital Preservation Matters.

Staffing for Effective Digital Preservation 2017: An NDSA Report

Staffing for Effective Digital Preservation 2017: An NDSA Report. Winston Atkins, et al. NDSA. October 2017. 
     This excellent report, based on a recent survey, looks at how organizations staffed and organized their digital preservation functions, and compares it with the survey done in 2012. This is a report worth studying.

Survey respondents were from the following organizations:

• Academic library or archives (46%)
• Government entities (11%)
• Museum (8%)

"Organizations establishing or scaling up digital preservation programs are faced with many staffing, scoping, and organizational decisions. Some of the questions that need to be answered include":

• How many staff members are needed and what kinds of skills, education, and experience should they have? 
• What types of positions should the institution create? 
• Should it hire new staff or retrain existing staff? 
• What functions should be included in the preservation program, provided by other parts of the organization, outsourced, or implemented through collaboration with other organizations? 
• What organizational and staffing models work well? 

From the survey, organizations reported: 

Staffing:

• an average of 13.6 FTE are working in digital preservation activities, but ideally the organizations would double that to 27.5 FTE 
• there is a need for more digital archivists,software developers, and cataloger/metadata analysts. 
• 68% of organizations retrained existing staff for at least some digital preservation functions, 
• 42% of organizations also hired experienced digital preservation specialists. 
• Staffing for an organization managing 1–50 TB 
• Current: 10.7 FTE 
• Ideal: 30.6 FTE

Content amount and Collection growth:

• 58.6% were preserving 1–50 TB of digital content, 
• 16.5% were preserving 51–100 TB, 
• 14.3% were preserving 101–500 TB,
• 8.3% were preserving more than 500 TB. 

• 73.2% expected less than 25% growth in the collection.  
• In 2012, 68% expected up to a 49% growth. 

Preservation activities and organization:

• Most organizations prefer conducting most digital preservation activities in-house
• Only 32% of the organizations had a dedicated digital preservation department

• 46% were not satisfied with how the digital preservation function was organized within their organization
• 25% believed it was organized properly.
• Satisfaction decreased from 2012, when 43% agreed or strongly agreed that their digital preservation functions were well-organized.
• One of the most striking findings was the increased percentage of respondents who reported that they were not satisfied with the way the digital preservation function was organized

•  52% of respondents participate in at least one consortium or cooperative network. Benefits include:
• networking (68%), 
• training (57%), 
• storage space (54%) 
• Consulting (35%), 
• access interface (33%) 
• communications/marketing (28%), 
• programming (25%), 
• federated search (16%)  

• Department that takes the lead for digital preservation: 
• Library / Archives 69.1%
• Information Technology (IT) 16.0%
• Preservation department 6.2%
• Other 8.6%

Other general comments of interest about digital preservation staffing issues include:

• “Continuing education is a must, so that staff can stay up-to-date on current trends and the latest news in technology.” 
• “It should be organized keeping in mind extra skills of an individual in addition to his/her specialist skill set. 
• “Staffing is critical to success.... All the pieces must be in place for a successful digital preservation effort.”

Importance of Qualifications for digital preservation staff in 2017, in order:

1. Knowledge of digital preservation standards/best practices
2. Communication
3. Passion and motivation for digital preservation
4. Collaboration
5. Analytical skills
6. Project planning/management

Digital Preservation Matters.

Preserving the public record on television is becoming an ever-more-urgent task

The Devolution Will Be Televised. Peter B. Kaufman and Jeff Ubois. The Nation. October 18, 2017.
     Preserving the public record on television is an increasingly critical challenge for the country and the world because it is a primary source that historians and others will rely on to document this administration. Audio and video will be a major part of the public record for this time period. "There is no question that, as we look to the end of this century and how our time will be remembered, we will look back at our news and our culture through moving image and recorded sounds."

Preserving the public audiovisual record on television, and all audiovisual media is urgent task, especially for memory institutions. Moving images are the most popular form of media today: over 80 percent of web traffic is video. Many professionals and organizations are working on this, but strong funding mechanisms are weak or missing. In October 1997, the Library of Congress issued its first report, “Television and Video Preservation 1997” the need for preserving these materials. The American broadcasting records are historical and cultural materials which are "a key to understanding our civilization”.  Many film and audiovisual assets were already being lost due to media degradation and equipment obsolescence.

National strategies are needed for publishing and distributing our digitized and born-digital archival material.  "As the recent scrubbing of government websites has shown, we must rely on non-governmental institutions to help ensure that our archives are never permanently altered to reflect political expediencies. Indeed, we should ensure that the video records of presidential press conferences, banking debates, foreign-policy debates, and all such public activity is preserved and remains accessible to future citizens, journalists, and political figures. We need to recommit to preserving all of our televised triumphs and tragedies."

Digital Preservation Matters.

Personal Digital Archiving Guide Part 2: Media Types and File Formats

Personal Digital Archiving Guide Part 2: Media Types and File Formats.  Scott David Witmer. Bits and Pieces. August 15, 2017.
     This helpful follow-up post focuses on “born-digital” files created on the computer, and the "characteristics of digital file formats that you should consider when deciding how to preserve your digital materials".  For information on digitizing, it links to guides and handouts, including scanning, recommendations, audio conversion, video conversion, storage, and others.

"The best time to think about preservation is before you create your files." Making decisions early, including organization and metadata, will make it easier to preserve digital files over time.  The post reviews:

• The trade off between Quality vs. Size of digital files
• Lossless versus lossy compression
• File Formats by Media Type
• Formats for Text, Image, email, audio, video

 Metadata is also important. Be consistent and descriptive when naming or grouping files.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Personal Digital Archiving Guide Part 1: Preservation Planning

Personal Digital Archiving Guide Part 1: Preservation Planning. Scott David Witmer. Bits and Pieces. April 26, 2017.
     Digital materials require active intervention if we want to be able to use them over time. Technology is constantly changing, digital files are at risk because of  accidental deletion or disaster. Having a preservation plan can help avoid data loss. "Do what makes the most sense to you to manage your own digital materials. Even if it’s not practical for you to follow all of these steps, any amount of effort to preserve your digital material is better than none!"

• Identify: What digital materials do you want to save? 
• Gather: Where are the digital files you want to keep? Gather all of the files you want to save onto one hard drive. Makes copies of them on other devices. 
• Select: Decide what you want to keep. 
• Organize: Know what the files are and where to find them. Descriptive information will help. Give the files meaningful names group files together. 
• Back-up Storage: After the files are gathered and organized, back them up. Follow the 3-2-1 Rule: Make 3 copies and 2 additional copies of all the files. Use 2 different types of storage media, such as an external hard drive or in cloud storage. Put one of the copies in a different location from the other 2 copies.
• Check the files periodically to make sure they are still usable, especially right after you back them up.  
• Update your long-term digital storage to a new storage device every 5–7 years, as significant upgrades in technology occur.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Five Organizational Stages for Digital Preservation

The Five Organizational Stages of Digital Preservation. Anne R. Kenney & Nancy Y. McGovern. "Digital Libraries: A Vision for the 21st Century..." 2003.
     I have been re-reading this interesting paper in preparation for an upcoming presentation, and realize the great information in it and the opportunity to reflect on where we are and where we are going. Some notes and quotes that I really like:

• The world is becoming increasingly dependent on digital information.... Despite the increasing evidence documenting the fragility and ubiquity of digital content, cultural repositories have been slow to respond to the need to safeguard digital heritage materials.
• Of all the preservation challenges facing us, none is more pressing than developing workable solutions to digital preservation.
• The reason for the lag in institutional response to the problem "lies in the fact that most of the attention given to digital preservation has focused on technology as both the root of the problem and the basis for the solution."
• The technological methods "that reduce things to on or off status— either you have a solution or you do not. This either/or assessment gives little consideration to the effort required to reach the on stage, to a phased approach for reaching the on stage, or to differences in institutional settings. Nor does it take into account that a partial program at one institution may represent a fully mature program at another."
• The goal of digital preservation is to maintain the ability to display, retrieve, and use digital material in the face of rapidly changing technological and organizational infrastructures. Unfortunately, there is no single best way to do just that, nor is there agreement on long-term solutions.
• In this paper, we describe five definable stages that cultural repositories will pass through on their way to developing a fully mature digital preservation program. 
• Each of these stages is clearly delineated, characterized by key attributes and organizational responses. Some of the stages may be shortened, and an institution may be further advanced in one aspect over another, but they must all be passed through and in the same sequence.

• The Five Organizational Stages:  The five stages of organizational response to digital preservation are:

1. Acknowledge: Understanding that digital preservation is a local concern;
2. Act: Initiating digital preservation projects;
3. Consolidate: Seguing from projects to programs;
4. Institutionalize: Incorporating the larger environment; and
5. Externalize: Embracing inter-institutional collaboration and dependency.

• Perhaps the most immediately valuable contribution of the Trusted Digital Repository report is the framework of TDR attributes. The six attributes of the TDR framework are: administrative responsibility, organizational viability, financial sustainability, technological and procedural suitability, system security, and procedural accountability. 
• The report defines the characteristics of each attribute that together address core legal, economic, technical, and other organizational issues, and break what is often presented as the monolithic digital preservation problem into manageable parts. 
• A notable feature is that technology is not the central focus or first consideration in the framework.
• Organizational stages for digital preservation have the potential to provide a more effective communication tool, to define a metric for quantifying progress towards a comprehensive digital preservation program, and to establish benchmarks for setting organizational goals.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Digital Preservation, Eh?

Digital Preservation, Eh? Alexandra Jokinen. bloggERS! February 14, 2017.    
     This is a post about international perspectives on digital preservation and about digital preservation in an institution in Canada. One way they are working on digital preservation, which they see as a very large, very complex (but exciting!) endeavour is to "start on a small scale, focusing on the processing of digital objects within a single collection, and then using those experiences to create documentation and workflows for different aspects of the digital archives program."  They chose one collection to start with and the first area of focus was appraisal. Their next step will be to physically organize the material, and the final steps will be to take the born-digital content that has been collected and create Archival Information Packages for storage and preservation with Archivematica . They want to "ensure that solid policies and procedures are in place for maintaining a trustworthy digital preservation system in the future."

Digital Preservation Matters.

Cultural Heritage and Digital Preservation

Iron Mountain And CyArk Join Forces To Digitally Preserve Fort York For Generations To Come. Press Release. IT Business Net. October 04, 2017.
      Fort York is a historical site laden with rich Canadian history. To ensure future generations can continue to learn about and experience the site, it is being preserved in an online virtual library, along with other world heritage sites.  The technology uses 3D laser scanning, photogrammetry, and traditional survey techniques to create an online, 3D library of the world's cultural heritage sites before they are lost to natural disasters, destroyed by human aggression, or ravaged by the passage of time.  In addition, the project will also use virtual reality technology to "transform Fort York into a living legacy". These efforts are part of how they ensure cultural heritage sites will be available for future generations to experience, while making them uniquely accessible today.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Church Preserves Precious Records of African Nation

Church Preserves Precious Records of African Nation. Newsroom. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 28 September 2017.  [YouTube]
     In Freetown, Sierra Leone, paper records dating back to the early 1800s are disintegrating at an alarming rate due to poor storage conditions, heat, humidity and frequent handling. The staff often pool money just to keep the lights on one or two days a week and were making a “frantic effort” to preserve copies of records by hand. “I had my heart broken because of the conditions of how these records are kept and the way that the people are working here, giving the best of themselves to preserve what they can for people and families of Sierra Leone.”  Despite valiant efforts by dedicated caretakers, rampant deterioration of the tattered records threatened to obliterate the very history of the nation. This changed with a plea from the government of Sierra Leone to the LDS president, asking for help in preserving the at-risk records.

The Church approved a project to image the dilapidated birth and death records and make them available online. FamilySearch has began the process of digitizing records in Freetown and in towns and remote villages across the country, and works with interfaith leaders such as The Catholic Church which has opened its record vaults to be part of the preservation project. “Any kind of record at all is crucially important because it becomes a database for future generations.” The preservation project will preserve some 4 million records.  FamilySearch is engaged in similar digitizing projects in countries all over Africa.

Digital Preservation Matters.