Rosetta and Amazon Storage

Rosetta and Amazon Storage. Chris Erickson. February 2015.
In the search for more file storage, as well as more affordable file storage, we tried Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). The plan was to connect the Rosetta Digital Preservation System to the Amazon cloud storage, and evaluate it as a possible storage solution. There is a free trial. The Free Tier includes 5GB storage, 20,000 Get Requests, and 2,000 Put Request.

Setup:
I tried various configurations, but decided on a single bucket for the files. I setup buckets for the IEs and metadata, but after trying it, decided to only keep the files on Amazon. That would keep the metadata local. I had tried nested folders, but couldn't figure out how to designate that in the storage rules and definition. So I create the folders by time period.

In the Rosetta Admin interface I create a File storage group, using the S3 storage plugin, and then entered the Bucket name, Secret Access Key, Access Key ID, and left the Maximum waiting time at the default. For the test, I set up a retention code for Amazon, and the storage rule used that code to determine what went to the Amazon storage. In a real storage instance, it would be better to use something that would not change, like the producer, etc.

It took a few tests to get everything in sync. The result was that Rosetta stored the content in Amazon just fine. I also tried adding content with a one day retention period, and the content was removed from Amazon after the day. A fixity check task was also able to work without a problem.

This gives us another storage option, though we decided to not use it at present.

Pricing at the time of this comparison, was:

	1 TB		50 TBs
Digital Storage Costs	Annual  Cost	20 Year Projected	Yearly  Charge	10 Year Projected	20 Year Projected	50 Year Projected
Cloud Storage
Amazon S3 - Regular	$360	$7,200	$17,706	$177,060	$354,120	$885,300
Amazon S3 - Copy / Glacier	$480	$9,600	$23,706	$237,060	$474,120	$1,185,300
Amazon S3 - Reduced & Glacier	$288	$5,760	$14,165	$141,648	$283,296	$708,240
DuraSpace - Preservation	$1,800	$36,000	$36,100	$361,000	$722,000	$1,805,000
DuraSpace - Dark copy/Glacier	$1,925	$38,500	$42,350	$423,500	$847,000	$2,117,500
DuraSpace - Enterprise Plus	$5,625	$112,500	$64,425	$644,250	$1,288,500	$3,221,250

More storage options will be considered. 

Digital Preservation Matters.

Save the Voices of Tolkien, Joyce And Tennyson

Save the Voices of Tolkien, Joyce And Tennyson. Laura Clark. Smithsonian. January 14, 2015.
The British Library issued a public call for help safeguarding the over 6.5 million recordings in their archives through digital preservation. It will take around £40 million to fully fund the effort, and time is running short. The British Library’s sound archives includes audio files from Tolkien, Joyce, Florence Nightingale, Tennyson, WWI soldiers, as well as many nature sounds, oral histories and theater performances.  Thousands of others are at risk and will disappear soon if no action is taken.

Digital Preservation Matters.

AHRQ Public Access to Federally Funded Research

AHRQ Public Access to Federally Funded Research. Francis D. Chesley. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. February, 2015.
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's  has established a policy for public access to scientific publications and scientific data in digital format resulting from funding through the agency. Preservation is one of the Public Access Policy's primary objectives.

The Public Access Policy includes the following objectives:

• Ensure that the public can access the final published digital documents.
• Facilitate easy public search, analysis of and access to these publications
• Ensure the attributes to authors, journals, and original publishers are maintained.
• Ensure that publications and metadata are in an archival solution.
• Ensure that all researchers receiving grants develop data management plans, describing how they will provide for long-term preservation of and access to scientific data in digital format.

Data management plans will include:

• A plan for protecting confidentiality and personal privacy.
• A description of how scientific data in digital format will be shared
• It must include a plan for long-term preservation and access to the data

The data management plans will be evaluated based on the values of long-term preservation, access, and the associated cost, and administrative burden. AHRQ will contract with a commercial repository to ensure long-term preservation and full access to the public.

Digital scientific data is defined as "the digital recorded factual material commonly accepted in the scientific community as necessary to validate research findings including data sets used to support scholarly publications, but does not include laboratory notebooks, preliminary analyses, drafts of scientific papers, plans for future research, peer reviews, communications with colleagues, or physical objects, such as laboratory specimens."

Digital Preservation Matters.

Internet future blackout: No way to preserve our data

Internet future blackout: No way to preserve our data. Lisa M. Krieger. San Jose Mercury News. February 12, 2015.

Vint Cerf spoke about the "digital vellum" needed to maintain the data that comprise text, video, software games, scientific data and other digital objects, and how to preserve their meaning.

Aiding preservation might involve "Information Centric Networking," which is based on two simple concepts -- addressing information by its name, rather than location, and adding computation and memory to the network. David Oran of Cisco Systems and Glenn Edens, research director of Palo Alto's Xerox Park, are working on that new technology.

Google is not directly involved in the digital preservation effort "although we have worked really hard at preserving the digital information of the day. We aren't planning to become the archive of the future -- although I think it would be cool." Cerf envisions libraries and governments investing in the technology needed to carry today's information into the distant future.


The "digital vellum" project led has been created at Carnegie Mellon University. This is how it would work: There's a digital snapshot of a document, which is then built into one giant file. Using preserved and transmitted instructions, a virtual computer pretends to be a 2015-era Mac or IBM computer, and can find the document. "If I can substantiate those bits (of a document) in another computer, years in future, then I will have created the same document -- I can reproduce what you were doing. It is a digital copy of the state of the computer you were using when you created new documents."

Rather than the current paradigm -- names, addresses and routes -- it would start with an "object," with a name, as the thing to be stored and moved. "Our current system of 'domain names' is not a stable system. The current routing system could be replaced by the information-centric system, where we keep track of everything not by where it is hosted but the information itself, by name.
Just as we need preservation of today's bits and software, our encryption systems will need to be preserved as well -- because once they're lost, so is the material that they're protecting. "We need an encryption system in which the keys never wear out and are never broken, that represents keying for hundreds of thousands of years."
 

Digital Preservation Matters.

Google VP leads calls for web content preservation

Google VP leads calls for web content preservation. Caroline Donnelly. IT Pro.  13 Feb, 2015.

Vint Cerf says action is needed to preserve the content of the internet for future generations to enjoy. Historians in the future could may view the 21st century as an “information black hole” because the software and services used to access online content could become defunct over time. To protect against this, he wants to see efforts made to create a “digital vellum” that will preserve the hardware and software needed to access online content in the years to come. "If we want to preserve them, we need to make sure that the digital objects we create today can still be rendered far into the future.” All web users are at risk of throwing their data away into a “digital black hole” in the mistaken belief that uploading content to a site or service will preserve it. “We digitise things because we think we will preserve them, but what we don’t understand is that unless we take other steps, those digital versions may not be any better, and may even be worse than, than the artefacts that we digitised.”
 

Digital Preservation Matters.

Crystal clear digital preservation: a management issue

Crystal clear digital preservation: a management issue.  Barbara Sierman. Digital Preservation Seeds.
February 1, 2015.
The book Digital Preservation for Libraries, Archives and Museums by Edward Corrado and Heather Lea Moulaison does a great job of explaining to people about digital preservation. "In crystal clear language, without beating about the bush and based on extensive up to date (until 2014) literature, digital preservation is explained and almost every aspect of it is touched upon. " It explains what digital preservation is not (backup, etc.) The point of the book is expressed by the statement:
“ensuring ongoing access to digital content over time requires careful reflection and planning. In terms of technology, digital preservation is possible today. It might be difficult and require extensive, institution-wide planning, but digital preservation is an achievable goal given the proper resources. In short, digital preservation is in many ways primarily a management issue”.
It uses the Digital Preservation Triad to symbolize the interrelated activities of

• Management-related activities,
• Technological activities and
• Content-centred activities.

The book, which is also available as an eBook, has a practical approach and emphasizes that “that digital preservation is important to the overall mission of the organization”, and not just an experimental project.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Save our Sounds

Save our Sounds. Luke McKernan. British Library.  12 January 2015.
The nation’s sound collections are under threat, from physical degradation, and also as play back devices wear out and disappear. "Archival consensus internationally is that we have approximately 15 years in which to save our sound collections by digitising them before they become unreadable and are effectively lost." The British Library collection contains over 6.5 million recordings of speech, music, wildlife and the environment, from the 1880s to the present day. The Save our Sounds program has three major aims:

1. Preserve as much as possible of the nation's rare and unique sound recordings from collections across the UK
2. Establish a national radio archive to collect, protect and share with other partners
3. Invest in new technology to enable us to receive music in digital formats, working with  industry partners, to ensure their long-term preservation

The library is seeking to raise funds to help the preservation efforts, and to implement a national audit to map sound archives in the UK and to find those that are at risk.

Digital Preservation Matters.

New Expert Panel Report From Council of Canadian Academies Says Canada’s Memory Institutions “Falling Behind” in Preservation of Digital Materials

New Expert Panel Report From Council of Canadian Academies Says Canada’s Memory Institutions “Falling Behind” in Preservation of Digital Materials. Gary Price. Library Journal. February 4, 2015.
An expert panel report, Leading in the Digital World: Opportunities for Canada’s Memory Institutions, (208 pages; PDF) addresses the challenges and opportunities that exist for libraries, archives, museums, and galleries as they adapt to the digital age. Vast amounts of digital information are at risk of being lost because many traditional tools are no longer adequate in the digital age. Memory institutions face the difficult task of preserving digital files in formats that will remain accessible over the long term. Institutions to collaborate more strategically and develop interactive relationships with users. They must also be leaders within and among their respective organizations. Many of the challenges faced are rooted in technical issues associated with managing digital content, the sheer volume of digital information, and the struggle to remain relevant. Collaboration is essential for adaptation, which enables institutions to access the resources required to deliver the  services that users now expect.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Reference rot in web-based scholarly communication and link decoration as a path to mitigation

Reference rot in web-based scholarly communication and link decoration as a path to mitigation.
Martin Klein, Herbert Van de Sompel. LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog. February 6, 2015.
The failure of a web address to link to the appropriate online source is a significant problem facing scholarly material. The ability to reference sources is a fundamental part of scholarship. "Increasingly, we see references to software, ontologies, project websites, presentations, blogs, videos, tweets, etc. Such resources are usually referenced by means of their HTTP URI as they exist on the web at large. These HTTP URIs allow for immediate access on the web, but also introduce one of the detrimental characteristics of the web to scholarly communication: reference rot." Reference rot is a combination of two problems common for URI references:

• link rot: A URI ceases to exist; the page is not found
• content drift: The resource identified by its URI changes over time and is not what was originally referenced

Their study shows that articles published in 2012 suffer from link rot: 13% of arXiv, 22% of Elsevier, and 14% of PubMed Central. For articles published in 2005, the numbers are higher: corresponding numbers are 18%, 41%, and 36%.

The typical strategy to address the problem is to link to a snapshot of the web page (instead of the original web page) created at the time and stored in a web archive, such as the Internet Archive, archive.today, and perma.cc.

 There are problems with the approach. The link copy may not remain in place either. The linking URI is lost, as is the any information about the page or changed page. Link decoration can be used, with the URI of the original, the snapshot, and datetime of linking. Memento can provide this information but there are discussions needed to decide how to best convey the information.

Digital Preservation Matters.

All in the (Apple ProRes 422 Video Codec) Family

All in the (Apple ProRes 422 Video Codec) Family. Kate Murray. The Signal. January 28, 2015. 
The Apple ProRes 422 family of video codecs to the Sustainability of Digital Formats website. These codecs are proprietary, lossy compressed, high quality intermediate codecs for digital video primarily supported by Final Cut Pro.

The Apple ProRes 422 Codec Family comprises four subtypes:

1. ProRes 422 HQ: the highest data-rate version of the ProRes 422 codecs, applying the least compression for the best quality but the largest files.
2.  ProRes 422:  the second-highest data-rate of the group, often used for multistream, real-time editing and has a significant storage savings over uncompressed video 
3. ProRes 422 LT:  the third-highest data-rate version, considered an editing codec with  smaller file sizes
4. ProRes 422 Proxy: the lowest data-rate version often used in offline post-production work that requires low data rates but also a full screen picture.
   
   
   Digital Preservation Matters.

Digital Preservation Coalition publishes ‘OAIS Introductory Guide (2nd Edition)’ Technology Watch Report

Digital Preservation Coalition publishes ‘OAIS Introductory Guide (2nd Edition)’ Technology Watch Report. Brian Lavoie.  Digital Preservation Coalition. Watch Report. October, 2014. [PDF]

The report describes the OAIS, its core principles and functional elements, as well as the information model which support long-term preservation, access and understandability of data. The OAIS reference model was approved in 2002 and revised and updated in 2012. Perhaps “the most important achievement of the OAIS is that it has become almost universally accepted as the lingua franca of digital preservation”.

The central concept in the reference model is that of an open archival information system. An OAIS-type archive must meet a set of six minimum responsibilities to do with the ingest, preservation, and dissemination of archived materials: Ingest, Archival Storage, Data Management, Preservation Planning, Access, and Administration. There are also Common Services, which consist of basic computing and networking resources.

An OAIS-type archive references three types of entities: Management, Producer, and Consumer, which includes the Designated Community: consumers expected to independently understand the archived information in the form in which it is preserved and made available by the OAIS. This is a  framework to encourage dialogue and collaboration among participants in standards-building activities, as well as identifying areas most likely to benefit from standards development.

An OAIS-type archive is expected to:

• Negotiate for and accept appropriate information from information producers;
• Obtain sufficient control of the information in order to meet long-term preservation objectives;
• Determine the scope of the archive’s user community;
• Ensure the preserved information is independently understandable to the user community
• Follow documented policies and procedures to ensure the information is preserved against all reasonable contingencies
• Make the preserved information available to the user community, and enable dissemination of authenticated

An OAIS should be committed to making the contents of its archival store available to its intended user community, through access mechanisms and services which support users’ needs and requirements. Such requirements may include preferred medium, access channels, and any access restrictions should be clearly documented.

 The OAIS information model is built around the concept of an information package, which includes: the Submission Information Package, the Archival Information Package, and the Dissemination Information Package. Preservation requires metadata to support and document the OAIS’s preservation processes, called Preservation Description Information, which ‘is specifically focused on describing the past and present states of the Content Information, ensuring that it is uniquely identifiable, and ensuring it has not been unknowingly altered’. The information consists of:

• Reference Information (identifiers)
• Context Information (describes relationships among information and objects)
• Provenance Information (history of the content over time)
• Fixity Information (verifying authenticity)
• Access Rights Information (conditions or restrictions)

OAIS is a model and not an implementation. It does not address system architectures, storage or processing technologies, database design, computing platforms, or other technical details of setting up a functioning archival system. But it has been used as a foundation or starting point. Efforts, such as TRAC, have been made to put the attributes of a trusted digital archive into a ‘checklist’ that could be used to support a certification process. PREMIS is a preservation metadata initiative that has emerged as the de facto standard. METS, and XML based  document form, has become widely used for encoding OAIS archival information packages.

The ‘OAIS reference model provides a solid theoretical basis for digital preservation efforts, though theory and practice can sometimes have an uneasy fit.’

Digital Preservation Matters.

Digital Tools and Apps

Digital Tools and Apps. Chris Erickson. Presentation for ULA. 2014. [PDF]
This is a presentation I created for ULA to briefly outline a few tools that I find helpful. There are many useful tools, and more are being created all the time. Here are a few that I use.

• Copy & Transfer Tools: WinSCP; Teracopy;
• Rename Tools: Bulk Rename Utility
• Integrity & Fixity Tools: MD5Summer; MD5sums 1.2; Quick Hash; Hash Tool
• File Editing Tools: Babelpad; Notepad++; XML Notepad; 
• ExifTool; BWF MetaEdit; BWAV Reader;
• File Format Tools: DROID; 
• File Conversion:  Calibre; Adobe Portfolio;
• Others: A whole list of other tools that I use or suggest you look at.
•  PDF/A tools
• Email tools

 Please let me know what tools you find helpful.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Preserving progress for future generations

Preserving progress for future generations. Rebecca Pool. Research Information. February/March 2015.
Digital preservation remains one of the most critical challenges facing scholarly communities today. From e-journals and e-books to emails, blogs and more, electronic content is proliferating and organizations worldwide are trying to preserve information before the electronic information is lost. Some of the organizations include: Portico (which preserves content on behalf of participating publishers; the number of open access journals it includes is rising, ); CLOCKSS (still grappling with the cost models of providing preservation service).

There is a rising demand for the preservation of dynamic content. No one is able to "capture dynamic content and [preserve] a day-to-day, or even, minute-to-minute feed of this content." There are only snapshots. CLOCKSS is developing the ‘how to’ process to preserve these ‘snapshots’ across multiple locations, validating each against the other, and is also exploring the best pricing structures to preserve such content.

Other organizations include LOCKSS, The Digital Preservation Network, HathiTrust, Preservica, Archivematica, and Rosetta, whose recent clients are the State Library of New South Wales and the State Library of Queensland.

The digital preservation development is clearly gaining momentum, growing in both size and complexity. "Clearly progress is being made and you can measure that by the maturity of solutions on offer." But for most organizations, the urgency of digital preservation has yet to hit home.

"Trying to sell the idea of digital preservation on the basis of return on investment has been very hard. By its nature, it’s a long-term activity and you’re really hedging your bets against future risks. I think we are still in the very early days of genuinely understanding the value of digital assets... and transferring this understanding over to financial assets doesn’t yet work very well." The European consortium 4C (Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation) has been investigating this problem. Their road map helps organisations appraise digital assets, adopt a strategy to grow preservation assets and develop costing processes. In addition they have developed a model for curation costs. The only way to understand the costs of preservation is though sharing, through openness and collaboration.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Ex Libris plugins for Rosetta on Github

Ex Libris plugins for Rosetta on Github. January 2015.
The Github site for Rosetta plugins. Includes:

• Rosetta.Jpylyzer Jpylyzer technical metadata plugin
• rosetta.JWPlayer
• rosetta.IABookReader
• rosetta.Jpylyzer-MDExtractorPlugin
• rosetta.Drmlint-RiskExtractorPlugin
• rosetta.Split2JpgMigrationToolPlugin Migration Tool Plug-in to split multi-page files to multiple jpg files
• rosetta.IIPImageVPP Rosetta IIPImage Viewer Pre-Processor Plugin

Digital Preservation Matters.

The Cobweb. Can the Internet be archived?

The Cobweb. Can the Internet be archived? Jill Lepore. The New Yorker. January 26, 2015.

The average life of a Web page is about a hundred days. The pages can disappear through “link rot,” or people may see an updated web page where most likely the original has been overwritten. Or the page may have been moved and something else is where it used to be. This is known as “content drift.” This is worse than an error message since it’s impossible to tell that what you’re seeing isn’t what you went to look for: the overwriting, erasure, or moving of the original is invisible.

Link rot and content drift, collectively known as “reference rot,” have been disastrous for the law and courts. In providing evidence, legal scholars, lawyers, and judges often cite Web pages in their footnotes; they expect that evidence to remain where they found it as their proof. But a 2013 survey of law- and policy-related publications found that after six years, nearly fifty per cent of the URLs cited in those publications no longer worked. A Harvard Law School study in 2014  showed “more than 70% of the URLs within the Harvard Law Review and other journals, and 50% of the URLs within United States Supreme Court opinions, do not link to the originally cited information.”

The overwriting, drifting, and rotting of the Web also affects engineers, scientists, and doctors. Recently, researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory reported the results of a study of three and a half million scholarly articles published in science, technology, and medical journals between 1997 and 2012: one in five links provided in the notes suffers from reference rot.

The problems with links disappearing has been known since the start of the internet. Tim Berners-Lee proposed the HTTP protocol to link web pages, and he had also considered a time axis for the protocol, but "preservation was not a priority.” Other internet pioneers are also concerned. Vint Cerf has talked about a need for a long-term storage “digital vellum”:  “I worry that the twenty-first century will become an informational black hole.” Brewster Kahle started the Internet Archive, which has archived more than four hundred and thirty billion Web pages.

Herbert Van de Sompel has been working on Memento which allows a user to look at pages around the time it was written.
 

Digital Preservation Matters.

Open Preservation Foundation to provide sustainable home for JHOVE

Open Preservation Foundation to provide sustainable home for JHOVE. Becky. Open Preservation Foundation Blog. 3 Feb 2015.
The Open Preservation Foundation is taking stewardship of the JHOVE preservation tool and providing a sustainable home.  The tool will become part of the OPF software portfolio
and follow their Software Maturity Model. Portico is contributing code improvements that they have made to the tool. Other tools in the portfolio include:

• Jpylyzer: JP2 image validator and properties extractor
• FIDO: command-line tool to identify the file formats of digital objects.
• Matchbox: duplicate image detection tool
• xcorrSound: four tools to improve Digital Audio Recordings

Digital Preservation Matters.

Office Opens up with OOXML

Office Opens up with OOXML. Carl Fleischhauer, Kate Murray. The Signal. February 3, 2015.
Nine new format descriptions have been added to the Library’s Format Sustainability Web site. These closely related formats relate to the Office Open XML (OOXML) family, which are the formats of the Microsoft family of “Office” desktop applications, including Word, PowerPoint and Excel. Formerly, these applications produced files in proprietary, binary formats with the extensions doc, ppt, and xls. The current versions employ an XML structure for the data and an x has been added to the extensions: docx, pptx, and xlsx.

"In addition to giving the formats an XML expression, Microsoft also decided to move the formats out of proprietary status and into a standardized form (now focus on the word Open in the name.) Three international organizations cooperated to standardize OOXML."

The list of the nine:

• OOXML_Family, OOXML Format Family, ISO/IEC 29500 and ECMA 376
• OPC/OOXML_2012, Open Packaging Conventions (Office Open XML), ISO 29500-2:2008-2012
• DOCX/OOXML_2012, DOCX Transitional (Office Open XML), ISO 29500:2008-2012; ECMA-376, Editions 1-4
• DOCX/OOXML_Strict_2012, DOCX Strict (Office Open XML), ISO 29500:2008-2012; ECMA-376, Editions 2-4
• PPTX/OOXML_2012, PPTX Transitional (Office Open XML), ISO 29500:2008-2012; ECMA-376, Editions 1-4
• PPTX/OOXML_Strict_2012, PPTX Strict (Office Open XML), ISO 29500:2008-2012; ECMA-376, Editions 2-4
• XLSX/OOXML_2012, XLSX Transitional (Office Open XML), ISO 29500:2008-2012; ECMA-376, Editions 1-4
• XLSX/OOXML_Strict_2012, XLSX Strict (Office Open XML), ISO 29500:2008-2012; ECMA-376, Editions 2-4
• MCE/OOXML_2012, Markup Compatibility and Extensibility (Office Open XML), ISO 29500-3:2008-2012, ECMA-376, Editions 1-4

 "Meanwhile, readers should remember that the Format Sustainability Web site is not limited to formats that we consider desirable. We list as many formats (and subformats) as we can, as objectively as we can, so that others can choose the ones they prefer for a particular body of content and for particular use cases."

Digital Preservation Matters.

Websites Change, Go Away and Get Taken Down

Websites Change, Go Away and Get Taken Down.  Website. January 2015.

Perma.cc is a beta service that allows users to create citation links that will never break.
When a user creates a link, Perma.cc archives a copy of the referenced content, and generates a link to an unalterable hosted instance of the site. Regardless of what may happen to the original source, if the link is later published by a journal using the Perma.cc service, the archived version will always be available through the Perma.cc link.

When readers click on a Perma.cc link they are directed to a page which points to either the original site (which may have changed since the link was created) or see the archived copy of the site in its original state.

Perma.cc is an online preservation service developed by the Harvard Law School Library in conjunction with university law libraries across the country and other organizations in the “forever” business.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Phase Two of POWRR: Extending the Reach of Digital Preservation Workshops

Phase Two of POWRR: Extending the Reach of Digital Preservation Workshops. Danielle Spalenka. January 27, 2015.
     The Digital POWRR Project (Preserving digital Objects with Restricted Resources) will continue the POWRR workshops for two years.

Project team members realized that many information professionals feel overwhelmed by the scope of the digital preservation problem, which prevents them from implementing digital preservation activities. They found that digital preservation is best thought of as an incremental, ongoing, and ever-shifting set of actions, reactions, workflows, and policies. Digital preservation activities can be started by taking small steps to prioritize and triage digital collections, while working to build awareness and advocate for resources.

Some of the resources on the site include: 

• Kicking the Habit (of Resistance to Digital Preservation). January 2015
• Overwhelmed to action: digital preservation challenges at the under-resourced institution
• From Theory to Action: Good Enough Digital Preservation for Under-Resourced Cultural Heritage Institutions

Digital Preservation Matters.

Memorial University of Newfoundland selects Ex Libris Solutions, including Rosetta

Memorial University of Newfoundland selects Ex Libris Solutions, including Rosetta. Press Release. Ex Libris. January 28, 2015.
The Memorial University in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada has adopted a suite of Ex Libris solutions comprised of the Alma library management solution, the Primo discovery and delivery solution, and the Rosetta digital asset management and preservation system. These solutions replace multiple disparate legacy systems used by the Library.

Rosetta will enable Memorial University to manage and preserve its important collections of Newfoundland's history, including a huge collection of digitized newspapers. Using the Primo search interface for physical collections, digital and digitized assets, and electronic resources, Memorial will provide a seamless discovery experience to users, whatever their learning and teaching needs. 

Digital Preservation Matters.

University of Arizona selects Ex Libris Rosetta.

University of Arizona selects Ex Libris Rosetta. Press Release. Ex Libris. January 27, 2015.
The University of Arizona has adopted the Rosetta digital management and preservation solution. Rosetta will help the university provide sustained access to scholarly digital content and research to both university members and the broader academic community.

"After evaluating a number of commercial digital preservation systems, we found that Rosetta had the unique capabilities that Arizona requires. Our priorities for 2015 led us to seek a preservation solution that could be used collaboratively by a number of campuses. Rosetta's ability to provide end-to-end digital asset management and preservation for the vast array of assets and research data that the university possesses, its consortial architecture that allows participating institutions to maintain a degree of autonomy, and its ability to act as a transitional component between multiple display layers, made it the clear choice for Arizona."

Digital Preservation Matters.

ForgetIT

ForgetIT. Website. January 23, 2015. 

While preservation of digital content is now well established in memory institutions such as national libraries and archives, it is still in its infancy in most other organizations, and even more so for personal content. ForgetIT combines three new concepts to ease the adoption of preservation in the personal and organizational context: 

1. Managed Forgetting: resource selection as a function of attention and significance dynamics. Focuses on characteristic signal reduction. It relies on information assessment and offers options such as full preservation, removing redundancy, resource condensation, and complete digital forgetting. 
2. Synergetic Preservation: making intelligent preservation processes a part of the content life cycle and by developing solutions for smooth transitions.
3. Contextualized Remembering: keeping preserved content meaningful by combining context extraction and re-contextualization.

The main expected outcomes are the flexible Preserve-or-Forget Framework for intelligent preservation management and, on top of it, two application pilots: one for personal preservation focusing and one for organizational preservation. It is an important step for managing and preserving new forms of community memory and cultural history. It is also an alternative to the “keep it all” approach in our digital society.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Digital Curation Foundations

Digital Curation Foundations. Stephen Abrams. California Digital Library. January 20, 2015. (PDF).
Digital curation is a complex of actors, policies, practices, and technologies that enables meaningful consumer engagement with authentic content of interest across space and time. The UC Curation Center defines its mission in terms of digital curation, rather than digital preservation because that better expresses the need for coordinated activities of preservation of, and access to, managed assets. It also reflects the idea of ongoing enrichment of managed content rather than just maintaining the content over time. This should ideally start before the assets are created. The approach is more on services than systems, and those services should be delivered at the place they are needed.


The laws of library science deal with use, service to the users, and ongoing change. Every asset should be curated in order to be used. They should be able to be used when and where the user needs them and in accordance with the user's expectations. The digital curation activities must not only be sustainable, but capable of evolving to meet every changing needs as well as risks. This kind of service requires "administrative, financial, and professional support.

Curation decisions should be made with respect to an underlying theory or conceptual domain model based on first principles. The ultimate goal of digital curation is to deliver content. The digital curation field has reached a stage of maturity where it can usefully draw upon a rich body of theoretical research and practical experience. 

• The curation imperative: providing highly available, responsive, comprehensive, and sustainable services for access to, and use and enhancement of, authentic digital assets over time.
• The primary unit of curation management is the digital object
• The true focus of curation is the underlying information meaning of the objects. "In other words, bits are the means, content is the ends."

Curation services include:

• Creation / acquisition.
• Appraisal / selection.
• Preservation planning.
• Preservation intervention.
• Selection of appropriate curation service providers
• Appropriate micro services

Digital Preservation Matters.

X-ray technique reads burnt Vesuvius scroll

X-ray technique reads burnt Vesuvius scroll. Jonathan Webb. BBC News. 20 January 2015.
Scientists are using a 3D X-ray imaging technique to read rolled-up scrolls buried by Mount Vesuvius that can distinguish the ink from the paper. The technique has identified a handful of Greek letters within a rolled-up scroll. [BYU has used multi-spectral imaging to read the blackened unrolled scroll fragments. More here.] The X-ray phase-contrast tomography technique looks at the bumps on the paper rather than chemicals in the ink that yielded the long-hidden letters. The letters are slightly raised, the ink never penetrated into the fibres of the papyrus, but sat on top of them. Curved letters that stand out from the papyrus fibres are easier to identify than square ones.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Video Games and the Curse of Retro

Video Games and the Curse of Retro. Simon Parkin. New Yorker. January 11, 2015.
 Almost two and a half thousand MS-DOS computer games have been added to the Internet Archive game collection (which says that "Through the use of the EM-DOSBOX in-browser emulator, these programs are bootable and playable.") The archive has rescued historical games which are unplayable unless you also have the original hardware.

Video games are more prone to obsolescence than other digital products. When hardware and software change, many games become unplayable. Unlike other digital media, video games rely on audiovisual reproduction and on a computer’s ability to execute the coded rules and instructions. Game publishers may not have an incentive to maintain older games, so they become obsolete.

Britain’s National Media Museum established the National Videogame Archive, which aims to “preserve, analyse and display the products of the global videogame industry by placing games in their historical, social, political and cultural contexts.” The Internet Archive, by contrast, makes games playable online. The games are part of our social, political, and cultural context. “We risk ending up in a ‘digital dark age’ because so much material that defines our current era is immaterial and ephemeral.” This is the motivation for many video-game preservationists: save everything before it’s lost, and let the future decide what matters in the long run.

Digital Preservation Matters.

The Dataverse Network

The Dataverse Network. Harvard Dataverse Network. 2014.
The Dataverse Network is an open source application to publish, share, reference, extract and analyze research data. It facilitates making data available to others and to replicate work of other researchers. The network hosts multiple studies or collections of studies, and each study contains cataloging information that describes the data plus the actual data and complementary files.

The Dataverse Network project develops software, protocols, and community connections for creating research data repositories that automate professional archival practices, guarantee long term preservation, and enable researchers to share, retain control of, and receive web visibility and formal academic citations for their data contributions.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Fighting entropy and ISIL, one image at a time

Fighting entropy and ISIL, one image at a time. Whitney Blair Wyckoff. FedScoop. December 10, 2014.

United States security is generating so much data that traditional disk media is being pushed to its limits, requiring new technologies to safely store all that information. Hitachi Data Systems has a new technology to preserve information on disks in an infinitely expandable array. This platform uses Blu-ray XL M-DISCs that resist environmental conditions and can last for more than 1,000 years. The M-DISC optical solutions have proven survivability and durability. This system represents both "the highest reliability as well as the lowest overall cost of ownership representing superior savings in power, footprint and data reliability."

The IT can supplement magnetic storage with optical media to create a preservation tier that enables IT managers to migrate data when they want, not when the technology or media forces them.  This saves money and allows for more strategic long term planning. Flash media, magnetic tape storage, regular optical discs all are subject to deterioration and have short life spans. With additional storage servers, the amount of data that can be accessed in unlimited.

The system can preserve data for as long as necessary and access it whenever needed. Benefits provide lower operating costs through lower media migration costs, wider environmental storage requirements, migration-free technology upgrades and high media longevity and durability.

"The cost savings is stark while the possibility of data loss is virtually eliminated."

Digital Preservation Matters.

How one of the world’s largest archives is managing the move from parchment to pixels

How one of the world’s largest archives is managing the move from parchment to pixels. David Clipsham. Blog. January 16 2015.
The UK National Archives is to permanently preserve the records of the UK government that have been selected for their historic value. Because there was no authoritative source of information regarding file formats they developed PRONOM, a registry of file formats and the applications required to open and read them, and DROID, a freely available open source tool to manage that data and information.There the approach to digital preservation, which they call parsimonious preservation, is essentially two principles:

1. Understand what you have got
2. Keep it safe

In addition, they have built an infrastructure with programs for virus scanning, file fixity checking to ensure that any digital object received has not been altered or corrupted, identifying the file type, and recording of metadata.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Creating and Archiving Born Digital Video

Creating and Archiving Born Digital Video. Library of Congress. December 2, 2014.
Four PDF documents from the Library of Congress / The FADGI Audio-Visual Working Group. They provide practical technical information for both file creators and file archivists to help them make informed decisions when creating or archiving born digital video files and to understand the long term consequences of those decisions.

•  Part 1. Introduction. Explanatory document.
  These recommended practices are intended to support informed decision-making and guide file creators and archivists as they seek out processes, file characteristics, and other practices that will yield files with the greatest preservation potential.
  The documents and case histories show that there is no one answer to the question “what format should I use to ensure sustainable long term access for my born digital video files?” Instead, there is "a range of solutions based on the fitness for purpose concept where the workflows and deliverables achieve the specific goals set out for the project within the existing constraints and circumstances."
• Part 2. Eight Federal Case Histories. This report presents eight case histories documenting the current state of practice in six federal agencies working with born digital video, divided into 3 creating cases, and three archiving cases.The goal of the three Creating case histories is to encourage a thoughtful approach from the very beginning of the video production project,  which takes sustainability and interoperability into account. The three Archiving case histories show issues of moving the files into repositories, and explore the issues of long term retention and access. The report contains recommended practices, requirements, advice, examples of when following recommended practices is not practical, costs, and lessons learned. At the end are helpful File Characteristic Comparison Tables summarizing the specifications of the creating and archiving case histories, both video and audio data.
• Part 3. High Level Recommended Practice. This document outlines a set of high level recommended practices for creating and archiving born digital video, with advice for file creators, archivists, and advice for both that transcend life cycle points.Some important general points:
• Born digital video files should be the highest quality that the institution can afford to make and maintain over the long term.
• Project planning should include capabilities to create high quality digital video files and metadata from the outset
• One of the most important functions of archival repositories is to document their holdings.
• Identify the file characteristics at the most granular level possible, including the wrapper and video stream encoding 
• It's essential in an archival environment to understand why changes to the technical characteristics of the file are needed and the impacts of these changes on the data.
• Equally as important is to document all the changes to order to document provenance.
• Create metadata to support life cycle management
• Plan for access: high quality born digital video files may need additional processing to be made widely available

• Part 4. Resource Guide. This document includes links to resources including those referred to in the case histories and recommended practices. Contains an excellent resource list to websites, documents, white papers, tools; they cover the areas of storage; transcoding / editing and other technical tools; inventorying and processing; digitizing, capture, preservation & quality control; authenticity, fixity & integrity; file naming; metadata; formats; standards; video creation; equipment and capture devices. 

[The report mentions the program ImgBurn for creating ISO images from files. Be aware the install files include OpenCandy (considered malware/ nuisance ware) which will be flagged by Symantec, AVG, and other anti-virus programs.]

Digital Preservation Matters.

Ensuring long-term access: PDF validation with JHOVE?

Ensuring long-term access: PDF validation with JHOVE? Yvonne Friese. ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.  PDF Association. December 17, 2014.
JHOVE is an open source tool for identifying, characterizing and validating twelve common formats such as pdf, tiff, jpeg, aiff and wave.  Pages within a PDF file are usually stored as a page tree, allowing the user to reach a given page as quickly as possible. Common advice for long-term archiving is to preferentially use the PDF/A format. However, this no longer matches to the day-to-day reality of many workflows which use JHOVE for validation tests. The differences between PDF and PDF/A means that there there can be validation errors. JHOVE’s PDF module is certainly capable of validating PDF/A files but the feature does not work well.  The process does not analyze the content of the data streams, meaning that it cannot validate PDF/A compliance in line with ISO standards. JHOVE is not suited to PDF/A validation but there currently are no alternatives to JHOVE for validating standard PDFs.

JHOVE can still be useful, provided users understand its error reports and are aware of ways to resolve them. Even with the problems JHOVE remains an excellent option for providing initial guidance.

[In our own institution, we have found JHOVE to be useful in identifying PDF files that have potential problems. Each problem for each source needs to be examined to decide if there is a preservation risk.]

Digital Preservation Matters.

Digital Audio Preservation at MIT: an NDSR Project Update.

Digital Audio Preservation at MIT: an NDSR Project Update. Susan Manus, Tricia Patterson. Library of Congress; The Signal. January 16, 2015.
Report of the residency position, in which Tricia is primarily tasked with: completing a gap analysis of the digital preservation workflows currently in place for audio streaming and preservation, and developing lower-level diagrammatic and narrative workflows. [Workflow images are in the article.] Workflow documentation is receiving increased acknowledgement and appreciation in the preservation environment. The reasons:

• tested, repeatable road map allows processing of larger projects with efficiency and security
• detailed workflows show redundancies and deficiencies in processes across departments
• workflow documents clarify roles and accountability within the chain of custody.

The benefits include getting a better idea of what digitization project documentation is generated and that the documentation needs to be preserved as well. It has also helped identify steps that would benefit from automation.The process started with itemizing 50-60 delivery requirements, including relevant TRAC requirements (PDF), covering display and interface, search and discovery, accessibility, ingest and export, metadata, content management, permissions, documentation and other considerations. From there requirements were prioritized on a scale from “might be nice” to “must-have.” The next step is to measure options against our prioritized requirements to determine the needs of the Libraries now. An important part is to provide meaningful access to the audio treasures in the library.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Preserving Write-Once DVDs

Preserving Write-Once DVDs: Producing Disk Images, Extracting Content, and Addressing Flaws and Errors.  (PDF). An Analytic Report by George Blood Audio Video Film for the Library of Congress. April 2014.
Report on technical issues in reformatting projects for the Library of Congress with an overview of the range and extent of the issues.

• Most specialists agree that optical disc media, although inexpensive and easy to use, does not support long-term data management.
• The estimated shelf life of a CD-R or CD-RW is between five and ten years.
• The lifespan can be lengthened or shortened by environmental and technological factors.
• Of the 500 discs reformatted, 10% were problematic
• The report provides brief reviews of all of the tools used to clone discs.
• Shows the Structure of a VIDEO_TS folder

Digital Preservation Matters.

 

GPO Prepares To Become First Federal Agency Named As Trustworthy Digital Repository For Government Information

GPO Prepares To Become First Federal Agency Named As Trustworthy Digital Repository For Government Information. U.S. Government Publishing Office. Press Release. December 18, 2014.
The GPO is preparing to become the first Federal agency to be named as a Trustworthy Digital Repository for Government information through certification under ISO 16363, which defines a recommended practice for assessing the trustworthiness of digital repositories. The Audit and Certification checklist will be used by an accredited outside organization. This would be the first Federal agency to be certified.

To begin the audit process, GPO will be one of 5 institutions to receive a resident through the National Digital Stewardship Residency program to work for one year on preparation for the audit and certification of FDsys as an ISO 16363 Trustworthy Digital Repository.

The GPO has also recently changed its name to the Government Publishing Office.

Digital Preservation Matters.

SanDisk vows: We'll have a 16TB SSD WHOPPER by 2016.

SanDisk vows: We'll have a 16TB SSD WHOPPER by 2016. Chris Mellor. The Register. 25 Nov 2014.
SanDisk plans to have a 16 TB WORM (Write Once Read Many) flash storage. It could have a use case for archived content. There have been problems with flash storage, but the archived data is not rewritten and the technology's write endurance limitations won’t matter in that case.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Report Available for the 2014 DPOE Training Needs Assessment Survey

Report Available for the 2014 DPOE Training Needs Assessment Survey. Barrie Howard, Susan Manus. The Signal. Library of Congress. January 6, 2015.
An executive summary (PDF) and full report (PDF) of the survey results are now available. The survey was an effort to get a sense of the state of digital preservation practice and understand more about what capacity exists for organizations and professionals to effectively preserve digital content.
The most significant takeaways are:

1. an overwhelming expression of concern that respondents ensure their digital content is accessible for 10 or more years (84%), 
2. evidence of a strong commitment to support employee training opportunities (83%). 
3. a substantial increase across all organizations in paid full-time or part-time professional staff with practitioner experience (13%)
4. an increased number of staffing for digital preservation (46% FTE, 51% various staff)
5. increase in organizations providing financial support for training (82%)

The type of digital content held by each institution:

1. reformatted material digitized from collections already held (83%), 
2. born-digital content created by and for your organization trails close behind (76.4%). 
3. deposited digital materials managed for other individuals or institutions (45%). 

Training:

1. online delivery is trending upward across many sectors to meet the constraints of reduced travel and professional development budgets.
2. The survey shows that small, in-person workshops is the most preferred training option, followed by webinars, and self-paced, online courses as the next two choices.
3. Respondents identified a clear need for technical training to assist staff in understanding and applying specific digital preservation techniques in their daily work followed by training focused on strategic planning, management and administration, project management, and fundamentals.

Digital Preservation Matters.

TIMBUS Project Web Portal: a Gateway to the TIMBUS Tools

TIMBUS Project Web Portal: a Gateway to the TIMBUS Tools. Timbus Project website. December 19, 2014.

The EU-cofunded TIMBUS project focuses on resilient business processes making the data accessible over long periods. Continued accessibility is often considered as a set of activities carried out in the isolation of a single domain. TIMBUS, however, considers the dependencies on third-party services, information and capabilities that will be necessary to validate digital information in a future usage context. TIMBUS will deliver activities, processes and tools that ensure

• continued access to services and software
• to produce the context within which information can be accessed, properly rendered, validated and transformed into knowledge.

This approach extends traditional digital preservation approaches by introducing the need to analyse and sustain accessibility to business processes and the supporting services, and it aligns preservation actions more fully with enterprise risk management (ERM) and business continuity management (BCM).  The complexity and scale of enterprise business processes makes TIMBUS exceptionally relevant.

This website is a gateway to the outputs of the 4-year TIMBUS Project. It focuses on materials that bridge the gap between the complex research carried out by organizations and industries looking to implement direct, usable approaches to the digital preservation of their business processes. The site contains:

• Tools to collect relevant information from software and systems to generate a picture of a whole network of processes.
• Legalities Lifecycle Management tools and training
•  Risk assessment tools and recommendations about collected process data 
• Digital Preservation Expert Suite which includes tools to gather risk assessment  to provide Digital Preservation as a possible solution.
  
  
  Digital Preservation Matters.
  
   

The State Library of NSW selects Ex Libris and Axiell Solutions

The State Library of NSW selects Ex Libris and Axiell Solutions. Press release. 4 December 2014.
The State Library has announced it will adopt a suite of Ex Libris solutions which includes Alma, a  library management solution, the Primo discovery and delivery solution, and the Rosetta digital asset management and preservation system. Also the Adlib Archive software to manage its archival collections. These solutions replace multiple legacy systems used by the Library. "Rosetta’s comprehensive management and preservation capabilities for digital and digitized collections will ensure that the vast collections held in trust for the people of NSW will be preserved and available in the future."

Digital Preservation Matters.

In an All-Digital Future, It’s the New Movies That Will Be in Trouble.

In an All-Digital Future, It’s the New Movies That Will Be in Trouble. Bilge Ebiri. New York Media. December 16, 2014.
In 2007, researchers forecast that around 50 percent of the world’s movie screens would be digital by 2013. By the end of 2013, the figure was closer to 90 percent. In a short time, film has gone from an industry standard to a novelty.
Digital seemed by far the best option, but for long term preservation it has turned into "something of a catastrophe". “At this time, the longevity of digital files of moving images is anybody’s guess. We do know that it is much, much shorter than the longevity of photochemical film. If hard drives aren’t occasionally turned on, he notes, they start to become unusable."

Two famous examples of the perils of digital preservation:

1. when the makers of Toy Story attempted to put their film out on DVD a few years after its release, they discovered that much of the original digital files of the film had been corrupted. 
2. A similar fate came close to befalling Toy Story 2 when someone accidentally hit a “delete” button.

The irony of the digital revolution: It’s the newer movies that are in trouble. For content that was born in digital form, "all we can do is migrate the digital files as often as possible.” That requires technology and resources that go beyond what most organizations are able to handle.

The physical deterioration of drives and discs and chips isn’t the only thing digital filmmakers need to worry about. Digital files are also prone to become outdated, with software upgrades and new programs that render previous ones obsolete or unusable. Formats may be changing every 18 months to two years and may not be compatible with each other.

Part of the problem is that preservation isn’t a for-profit endeavor endeavor, so many do not want to spend a lot of money and space to preserve resources. But it becomes more important when considering the long term view.  “There’s this notion, which is not true, that digital is very inexpensive. Filmmakers and studios are saving a lot of money in production and post-production costs because of digital, and that’s a good thing. But because of that, many people don’t really understand that they’re putting their assets at risk by wholesale transferring to digital and then not keeping the originals.”

“This is not a new problem. In the 1970s and '80s, some film companies took all of their motion-picture film and transferred it to ¾-inch video, which was thought of as a preservation medium. They threw away their originals! And ¾-inch video was not a good format. In fact, it was a terrible format! This is happening with digital now. They’ve already sloughed off their nitrate collections, and there are actually discussions in some of the studios to get rid of their 35mm collections as well.”

However, film may not be as dead as some seem to think. Some archives have discussed manufacturing film themselves, if and when companies like Kodak or Agfa or Fuji go out of business. Sooner or later, there will be other strategies for the long-term preservation of digital material. “I even saw someone discussing the idea of shooting it all up into space and then waiting for it to come back around again,” he says. “That sounded like pure science-fiction, but who knows?”

Large studios are making sure that all the digital files associated with a multi-billion-dollar movie will be duplicated many times and securely placed in multiple locations. Others may not have the resources to preserve the content. Some relevant questions to ask:

•  What will happen to them over the course of what is sure to be multiple format changes? 
• Is somebody making sure their hard drives and the files are still usable? 
• Have they been distributed into multiple locations? 
• Will their producers and distributors remain solvent enough over the years to care for the content?

The story of cinema is the story of discovery. Movies once considered afterthoughts can, over time, become beloved classics. A print of a film long forgotten might turn up in a foreign archive and get revived. That may not be possible in an all-digital future, where moving-image files will need regular maintenance and upgrades to keep them viable. A forgotten movie, in other words, will be an extinct movie. 

Celluloid is far from a perfect medium, but it can survive even if some frames or reels are damaged or missing.  Not unlike with books, the simplicity of the physical medium held the key to its longevity.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Aligning Customer Needs: Business Process Management (BPM) and Successful Change Management in the L. Tom Perry Special Collections

Aligning Customer Needs: Business Process Management (BPM) and Successful Change Management in the L. Tom Perry Special Collections. Joseph Gordon Daines III. Library Leadership & Management. November 2014. PDF
A lot of archival processing happens before an archival or manuscript collection can be made available for research use by patrons. It is central to the archival endeavor. This article looks at the role of business process management (BPM) in automating many of the workflows used to manage the manuscript and archival collections

BPM is a field of management focused on aligning organizations with the needs and wants of their customer bases. The Special Collections department identified its customer bases as its curatorial staff and its patrons. Enabling the curatorial staff to more efficiently prepare manuscript collections for research use would also enable better customer service. Several different BPM techniques were used to gain an understanding of the curatorial needs of  the department as it automated the  workflows. This enabled the department to successfully simplify and streamline its workflows during the course of automating them. The end result has been more efficient processing of archival collections and better service for our patrons.

A review of the requirements showed a need for two types of functionality:

1. task management, and 
2. archival content management.

Business process:

• Systematic management, measurement and improvement of all company processes through cross-functional teamwork and employee empowerment.
• Standardize activities and processes in order to improve organizational efficiency
• Business process: “a series of interrelated activities, crossing functional boundaries, with specific inputs and outputs.”
• The tools that will be examined are process mapping, process modeling, statements of work, and use cases. Processes are modeled using at least one of the following charts: general process charts, process flow diagrams, process activity charts, or flowcharts.
• Flowcharts are useful in identifying decision points and parallel activities in a process.gain an understanding of the sequence of activities in the process
• Statements of Work: A specific statement regarding the requirements needed in a service contract. The statement of work should include all aspects of job requirements, performance and assessment.
• Use cases also help identify the actors involved in various activities and what they want from those activities. For the purposes of use cases, actors are defined as “anything that interfaces with your system—for example, people, other software, hardware devices, data stores, or networks. Each actor defines a particular role.” Use cases typically include two components—a diagram featuring the actor(s) and how they interact with the system and a flow of events statement. The flow of events statement is “a series of declarative statements listing the steps of a use case from the actor’s point of view.”
• ProcessMaker provides a SOW template that aided the project in automating the workflow comprising the department’s implementation of the archival business process.
• The use of BPM tools and techniques in the Perry Special Collections provided the department with a methodology to examine and improve the workflow used to provide access to archival materials.
• Business processes enable leaders to make informed decisions that can improve library’s abilities to deliver their services. 
• BPM tools are not difficult to use and provide a wide range of benefits. Library leaders should use BPM tools to lead successful change initiatives.

Digital Preservation Matters.

A picture is worth a thousand (coherent) words: building a natural description of images

A picture is worth a thousand (coherent) words: building a natural description of images. Google Research Blob. November 17, 2014. 
Google has developed a machine-learning system that can automatically produce captions to accurately describe images the first time it sees them. It can describe a complex scene which requires a deeper representation of what’s going on in the scene, capturing how the various objects relate to one another and translating it all into natural-sounding language. The full paper "Show and Tell: A Neural Image Caption Generator" is here.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Quantifying and Valuing the Wellbeing Impacts of Culture and Sport.

Quantifying and Valuing the Wellbeing Impacts of Culture and Sport. Daniel Fujiwara, et al. UK Department for Culture, Media & Sport. April 2014. PDF

A study to develop the evidence base on the well-being impacts of cultural engagement that provides new evidence of the link between our policies and the social impacts of engagement in culture.This presents the results of an analysis of the association between culture, sport and measures of subjective well-being.

When allocating scarce public resources, we would ideally like to know the costs and benefits of different allocating decisions.

A significant association was also found between frequent library use and reported well being. Using libraries frequently was valued at £1,359 per person per year for library users, or £113 per person per month, the third highest value.
  

Digital Preservation Matters.

Agreement Elements for Outsourcing Transfer of Born Digital Content.

Agreement Elements for Outsourcing Transfer of Born Digital Content. Ricky Erway, Ben Goldman and Matthew McKinley. Dublin, Ohio: OCLC Research. 2014. [PDF]
The article Swatting the Long Tail of Digital Media: A Call for Collaboration (2012) held that few institutions would be able to have the hardware, software, and expertise to be able to read all digital media types. A group of archival practitioners started a pilot project to test outsourcing of the transfer of content from physical media they couldn’t read in-house. They realized the need for agreements between repositories and service providers to spell out the terms of such collaboration. The group began compiling a list of elements that should be considered when creating these agreements.

This article suggests elements to consider when creating an agreement for outsourcing the transfer of born-digital content from a physical medium, while encouraging adherence to both archival principles and technical requirements. The main areas are:

1. General Provisions: desired outcome, description of work, responsibilities and liabilities
2. Information Supplied by Service Provider: handling instructions
3. Information Supplied by Client: content, inventory,
4. Statement of Work: processing, exceptions, documentation, delivery, acceptance
5. Cost and Liability: schedule of costs and charges, responsibilities of each party

The parties should agree upon a clear set of requirements regarding the services that the Service Provider is to provide. 

Digital Preservation Matters.

Want a 100TB disk drive? You'll have to wait 'til 2025

Want a 100TB disk drive? You'll have to wait 'til 2025. Lucas Mearian. Computerworld. Nov 25, 2014.

An industry consortium released a road map showing that new recording technologies could yield 100TB hard drives in about 10 years.

As disk drive densities increase, the potential for data errors also increases due to a phenomenon known as superparamagnetism, where the magnetic pull between bits on a platter's surface can randomly flip them, thus changing their value from one to zero or zero to one. "Thus higher storage capacities requires the introduction of new digital storage technology."

Digital Preservation Matters.

Introducing the New Forever Flash: The Best Business Model in Storage Gets Even Better

Introducing the New Forever Flash: The Best Business Model in Storage Gets Even Better. Jason Nadeau. November 20, 2014.

Pure Storage has introduced a new approach to storage: a plan called Forever Flash. They view it as perpetual storage [in the business sense, not in the digital preservation sense]. It is intended to help customers get off of the expensive and disruptive 3-year tech refresh and replace cycle. It is maintenance coverage that proactively protects all hardware and software on the array with replacement parts and support as needed, including SSDs, for as long as a customer remains on maintenance and support.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Jason Nadeau - 11.20.2014