Category: Digital Preservation (page 4 of 7)

A standard for preservation imaging

November 5, 2014 / verahubers / 0 Comments

Hans van Dormolen has been selected by IS&T (Society for Imaging Science & Technology) as the recipient of a 2014 Service Award. This gave us cause to interview Hans about the important work he performs for Metamorfoze.

What is this award about?
Every year IS&T presents 5 society related honors and awards and the Service Award is one of them. IS&T presents this award since 1960. From then on, this award has been given to a maximum of 10 people a year who have provided the society with one or more outstanding services. This year I have been selected for such an award for my work in objective capture practices for cultural heritage imaging. I have been giving lectures and teaching classes at the IS&T Archiving congresses since 2008 about objective capture practices as described in the Metamorfoze Preservation Imaging Guidelines. I feel very honored that my work is being rewarded by the IS&T society! I also believe that this reward is good for the national and international movement towards objective capture practices in the cultural heritage community.

Could you tell us more about your work on the Metamorfoze guidelines?
First of all, Metamorfoze is a funding programme which started in 1997, for the conservation of our Dutch Paper Heritage. Among the heritage institutes involved in the programme are libraries, archives and museums. The types of material vary widely and include books, newspapers, manuscripts, letters, photographs, and maps. The programme focuses on papers suffering from intrinsic decay. The objects are captured in high quality images and the original paper is preserved. Metamorfoze has now been running for 17 years. Since 1997, about 100 heritage institutes in the Netherlands have participated in the programme.
Not long after the start of the Metamorfoze programme I became involved in drafting guidelines for preservation imaging. These guidelines are built for the most part on objective capture methods and, having been a professional photographer in my previous career, on my experience in the analogue world.

It all started fifteen years ago in the world of microfilming. Using technical test charts and executing measurements such as contrast or gamma measurements I was able to provide insight into the loss of visual and tonal information of an original on a microfilm by expressing this loss numerically. It is helpful to know how much visual information is lost, because this loss is undesirable and can never be brought back and should therefore be avoided as much as possible. This policy of providing insight and diminishing the loss of visual information was at the core of all the microfilm guidelines that were produced for the conservation program Metamorfoze between 2000-2006. It is this policy that was continued in the Metamorfoze Preservation Imaging Guidelines.

From 2005 to 2012 my colleagues and I worked on drafting the Metamorfoze guidelines. In those 7 years different versions of the guidelines were published. The first concept of the guidelines was published in 2007. After various concepts version 1.0 was published in January 2012. Now, October 2014, this version is being used on a national as well as an international scale by libraries, archives, and museums. Also various camera and scanner manufactures have adapted their equipment in accordance with the Metamorfoze guidelines and are advertising with this fact.

In the Metamorfoze Preservation Imaging guidelines three quality levels are described: Metamorfoze, Metamorfoze Light, and Metamorfoze Extra Light. In quality level Metamorfoze guidelines are provided for the digitization of paper objects that are viewed as art, e.g. the letters of Vincent van Gogh. For this quality level not only the correct capture of all tonal information is of great importance, but also the retention of the exact color of the original in the digital reproduction. In quality level Metamorfoze Light we provide guidelines for the digitization of paper objects for which the retention of the exact color of the original is not as important, e.g. handwritten materials, magazines, books, and newspapers. In quality level Metamorfoze Extra Light guidelines for the digitization of books, newspapers and magazines are provided. This roadmap guarantees a good visual tonal capture for all the different kind of originals on a realistic level.

How important are the Metamorfoze guidelines?
Worldwide there are only two leading sets of imaging guidelines for the digitization of cultural heritage. The Metamorfoze guidelines are one of them. They are being applied in different ways in libraries, archives, and museums not only in Europe and North-America, but also in Asia and South-America. The other guidelines are the FADGI guidelines. These guidelines are published in the USA by the Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative. This initiative was formed by people from the cultural heritage community from institutions like the Library of Congress and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The FADGI guidelines differ from the Metamorfoze guidelines in its structure and use. But the aim “good imaging” is the same.

What are your plans for the future?
The Metamorfoze guidelines and the FADGI guidelines are just that: guidelines. Although very precise, they are not a standard like an ISO standard. For two years now I have been a member of an ISO workgroup, the ISO42 JWG26. In this workgroup we are specifying a recommendation for digitization of cultural heritage. Both guidelines, the Metamorfoze and FADGI guidelines, are used as a starting point for this recommendation. Both guidelines receive a lot of international attention and many people want to know which one is the best. With these recommendation we aim to make it clear that it is not about which guidelines are the best, but about how we can digitize our cultural heritage in the most optimal way.

Working according to the Metamorfoze guidelines requires an intense daily use of technical test charts. Using technical test charts is time consuming. With the Universal Test Target (UTT) as a quality management tool, the time spent daily on quality management can be reduced substantially. I therefore plan to publish an article about how to work with UTT according to the Metamorfoze guidelines in the near future.

The use of the Metamorfoze guidelines increases nationally as well as internationally. This use also includes a growing number of requests to teach, present lectures and to support digitization projects in a technical way. This went beyond my daily work in the KB, so I started a spin off company in 2012 to fulfil these requests. In the coming years I intend to expand this business.

IS&T will present Hans van Dormolen with the Service Award on November 6 during the 22nd Color and Imaging Conference in Boston.

Links
Metamorfoze
Metamorfoze Preservation Imaging Guidelines
IS&T
IS&T, Honors & Awards, Current year recipients

Finally ISO 16919 is published, ISO auditing can start

November 3, 2014 / barbarasierman2013 / 0 Comments

Originally posted on: http://digitalpreservation.nl/seeds/finally-iso-16919-is-published-iso-auditing-can-start/

Rijksmuseum-man-voor-commissie

I blogged before about the enormous amount of time it takes before a draft standard becomes an approved ISO standard and finally this week happened what we were waiting for: ISO officially published the ISO 16919 standard. Fully named: Requirements for bodies providing audit and certification of candidate trustworthy digital repositories. This mouthful of words all comes down to one element: consistency. An audit done with auditors from one part of the world should be comparable with an audit done by auditors in another part of the world. This is a problem that ISO has tackled by having a standard that regulates the accreditation of auditors : ISO 17021 Standard requirements for A&C general management systems. The PTAB group adapted this standard in order to make it complementary to the ISO 16363 -2012 standard Audit and Certification of Trustworthy Digital Repositories. What additions were needed? In short: specific digital preservation knowledge is introduced as a requirement in this standard. This is done by an explicit reference to the OAIS standard ISO 14721-2012, and the ISO 16363-2012. A list of competencies is added, describing the qualifications an auditor should possess to participate in the audit process. This also is focused on digital preservation aspects, adding to general auditors requirements like confidentiality, impartiality, responsibility etc. Experience in digital preservation is expected and where the knowledge is lacking, training might fill the gaps. The next step will be that qualified auditors will be appointed. Here the national standard bodies play an important role, as they monitor this process. So we are not there yet, but an important milestone is reached. The European framework of audit and certification sees an external audit according to ISO 16363 as the highest level of certification. An organisation can start with certification according to the Data Seal of Approval, followed by the Nestor/DIN 31644 standard. This will leave some time to train qualified auditors and get experience with the concept of certification in the evolving world of digital preservation.

The Research Data Alliance in Amsterdam and the KB

Prof. C. Borgman Image: Inge Angevaare KB-NL

Our colleagues from DANS organized the 4^th Plenary Meeting of the Research Data Alliance ( RDA: research data sharing without barriers) in Amsterdam, held this past three days. I was there, representing the KB, one of the few national libraries present. The concept that national libraries have “research data” is a concept that needs some explanation. There are repositories that collect data sets that are a result of research, often underpinning an article. DANS and 3TU are good examples of this. But there are also repositories that have “collections” to facilitate research, like sensor data, astronomical data, climate data. This is similar to what the KB offers the researchers: a vast amount of digitized historical texts and a (restricted accessible) web archive. Researchers use these sets, see for example the Webart project. With the growing attention for digital scholarship or e-Humanities, we can expect more use. And to make the process complete, the results of research done on KB collections might end up as a publication in the KB and a data set at DANS. An NCDD working group on Enhanced Publications is looking into ways to present both outputs smoothly as an integral entity to the user. In short, there are good reasons for libraries to be at RDA! The opening of the conference had several speakers from the European Commission. Both Robert Jan Smits (Director General DG Research) and Neelie Kroes, Vice president of the European Commision via video, stressed that the European Commission expects RDA to contribute to the growing importance of sharing and preserving research data, as open access to research data is a key message in the Horizon 2020 Programme. With a new cohort of EU politicians, some canvassing work to convince them of the ins and outs of this and the role of RDA will be necessary. Prof. dr. Barend Mons from Leiden University and founder of the “fair data” initiative was asked to give his views on the matter. FAIR data being: Findable, Accessible Interoperable and Re-usable, for both humans and computers. With the motto “Bringing data to Broadway” he pleaded for professionalism in data publishing by a good infrastructure for data and a rewarding system for researchers (data should have the same “status” as a publication) and for real data stewardship. Difficulties in hiring and keeping competent data scientists, for example are a barrier. Are publishers ready for data publishing or will the data end up in a black hole? Despite the trend of putting data central, he believes that there will always be “a narrative” explaining the findings (read: articles, books). To improve professional data stewardship, he pleaded to reserve 5% of research budgets to achieve the goals of FAIR data. Prof. Christine Borgman of UCLA gave an interesting talk in which she criticized some assumptions related to research data. For example data sharing: this is not common practice in every discipline and (again) as long as researchers are not rewarded for it, it will not happen. The emphasis on data might not be fair, publications are not simply “containers for data” but are arguments, supported by the data. The carefully designed process in publications (for example the order of appearance of the authors) is not even designed yet for data sets. More of this will be described in her new book, to be published by the end of the year. The rest of the work these days was done in a variety of Interest Groups (IGs) and Working Groups (WGs). The KB participates in the activities on Certification of Digital Repositories and Data Publishing (about workflows in data publishing, of interest for our (inter-) national e-Depot, about costs for data centers). All information is available from the RDA website. At the final meeting an interesting announcement was made: in December a follow up of the Riding the Wave report will be published, with the working title Harvesting the Data. Knowing the immense impact the Riding the Wave report had, this is something to look forward to. The Research Data Alliance started as a small group and has now over 2500 members, with a large range of Interest Groups and Working Groups. Time has come to streamline the activities more in order to integrate the results and to think about the sustainability of the RDA itself. The results of this process will be discussed in the next Plenary Meeting in San Diego 9-11 March 2015.

“Materials contain the seeds of their own destruction”. A preservation handbook.

September 22, 2014 / barbarasierman2013 / 0 Comments

Author: Barbara Sierman
Originally posted on: http://digitalpreservation.nl/seeds/materials-contain-the-seeds-of-their-own-destruction-a-preservation-handbook/

Regularly I have discussions whether digital material and analogue material can be treated the same way or whether the digital aspect requires special treatments, sometimes even resulting in different working processes, staffing and policies. Quite too often this discussion takes place with participants that are either representatives of the digital or of the analogue view. The polite way of trying to understand each other by finding analogies often lead to simplified views and unsatisfying outcomes and nobody gets the wiser. Therefore I was triggered when a new digital preservation handbook exactly raised this issue by stating “This book is based on the philosophy that there are preservation principles that apply to all kinds of materials, whether digital or not.” For a preservation handbook this is a realistic perspective, as organisations have both kinds of materials. The authors present this book as the first example of ” the essential tools and principles of a preservation management programme in the 21st century – one that addresses the realities of diverse collections and materials and embraces the challenges of working with both analogue and digital collections.”

This being stated, the authors start addressing the different issues related to digital versus analogue and refer to the fact that digitization in the past led to destruction of the related physical objects by assuming that “the information” was saved in the new digital object, a debatable point of view nowadays (see Nicholson Baker’s Double Fold. Libraries and the assault on paper. 2001) . They come with a set of shared preservation principles, for both analogue and digital material.

Four principles describe the context and aims of preservation, amongst which the needs of the user is mentioned (a point of view we also see in the OAIS model) as well as “Preservation is the responsibility of all, from the creators of objects to the users of objects“. A set of 8 general principles focus on “collaboration”, “advocacy, “active, managed care” and the preference for actions “that address large quantities of material over actions that focus on individual objects” [ although this is highly dependent on the value of these objects I would say] . The following principle describes the key of preservation: “Understanding the structure of material is the key to understanding what preservation actions to take, as materials contain the seeds of their own destruction (inherent vice)”.

This set of Preservation principles and practices is the red line for the rest of the book, which contains a wealth of information. I can recommend this book to both the digital and the analogue preservationists, as it will contribute to mutual understanding so desperately needed! And don’t complain about the price (90 dollars) : this book might be expensive, but a one day course is more expensive and almost all the rest you want to know about digital preservation is freely available on the internet!

The preservation management handbook: a 21st-century guide for libraries, archives and museums. [Edited by] Ross Harvey and Martha R. Mahard. Rowman and Littlefield, 2014. ISBN 978-0-7591-2315-1 (also available as e-book)

Meetup “Digitaal Geheugenverlies” van de VPRO

September 15, 2014 / barbarasierman2013 / 0 Comments

Als vervolg op de Tegenlicht uitzending van de VPRO over “Digitaal geheugenverlies” was er afgelopen dinsdag een “meetup” in Pakhuis De Zwijger in Amsterdam, waar ruim 100 mensen op afkwamen. De teloorgang van de bibliotheek van het KIT was voor regisseur Bregtje van der Haak aanleiding om deze documentaire te maken. Hans van Harteveld, voormalig directeur van deze bibliotheek, zei aanvankelijk verbijsterd te zijn geweest over de plannen met de bibliotheek. Zijn roman “De verkwanseling van een kroonjuweel” (Uitgeverij In de Knipscheer ISBN 978-90-6265-862-6) werd ter plekke gepresenteerd en beschrijft de hele gang van zaken.

Bart Krul (Instituut Maatschappelijke Innovatie) interviewde Bas Savenije (namens KB) en Marcel Ras (namens de NCDD). Leidraad van hun gezamenlijk betoog was dat niet alles bewaard kan worden, dat degene die het verzamelt niet noodzakelijkerwijze ook degene is die het moet bewaren, en dat de uiteindelijke gebruiker de reden is dat we het doen. Maar weten we wat die toekomstige gebruiker wil en maken de ontwikkelingen niet een herdefinitie van kernbegrippen noodzakelijk? Is de definitie van “publicatie” niet te strikt, als daardoor beleidsnotities van Jan Pronk buiten de boot zouden vallen? Door een intensieve nationale samenwerking, zoals nagestreefd door de NCDD (de Nationale Coalitie Digitale Duurzaamheid) kunnen we in Nederland tot een evenwichtig bewaarbeleid komen, om zo het gevreesde verlies te voorkomen.

Hoe helder en bekend dit ook in de oren klinkt van de mensen in de zaal die “in het vak zitten”, mij werd vooral duidelijk dat er een enorme kloof ligt tussen wat men denkt dat we doen als erfgoedsector en wat we feitelijk doen. Begripsverwarring over digitaal geheugenverlies bleek al in de uitzending, die voor een groot deel over de verdwijning van een papieren collectie ging. Onbekendheid bij de VPRO met erfgoedsector in Nederland zorgde er voor dat voornamelijk initiatieven uit de Verenigde Staten (Brewster Khale van Internet Archive, Jason Scott van The Archive Team en ingenieurs die NASA tapes redden) in de uitzending getoond werden. En steeds weer werd de vraag gesteld: waarom moeten we alles bewaren? Het is aan ons daar een antwoord op te hebben, net als Brewster Khale, Jason Scott en Ismail Serageldin, directeur van de bibliotheek van Alexandrië.

Als erfgoedsector doen we veel, maar het is goed te weten van particuliere initiatieven om digitaal erfgoed te behouden en te gebruiken. In de zaal zaten mensen die meededen met The Archive Team, wakker geschud toen Hyves werd opgeheven. Richard Vijgen vertelde hoe hij als grafisch ontwerper gebruik maakt van de geredde website Geocities en een nieuwe “installatie” maakte van dit materiaal door het opnieuw tot leven te brengen.

De VPRO heeft ons een goede dienst bewezen met deze documentaire en “meetup” (het is vast geen toeval dat de NRC onlangs ook over Internet Archive schreef), hoog tijd om ons eigen verhaal eraan toe te voegen!

Jpylyzer software finalist voor digitale duurzaamheidsprijs

September 11, 2014 / Johan van der Knijff / 0 Comments

Vandaag maakte de Britse Digital Preservation Coalition de finalisten bekend die in de race zijn voor de Digital Preservation Awards 2014. Deze prijs is in 2004 in het leven geroepen om aandacht te vestigen op initiatieven die een belangrijke bijdrage leveren aan het toegankelijk houden van digitaal erfgoed.

In de categorie Research and Innovation is een op de KB door de afdeling Onderzoek ontwikkelde softwaretool genomineerd: jpylyzer. Met jpylyzer kun je op een eenvoudige manier controleren of JP2 (JPEG 2000) beeldbestanden technisch in orde zijn. Binnen de KB wordt de tool onder meer ingezet bij de kwaliteitscontrole van gedigitaliseerde boeken, kranten en tijdschriften. Jpylyzer wordt ook gebruikt door diverse internationale collega-instellingen.

Jpylyzer is deels ontwikkeld binnen het Europese project SCAPE, waarin de KB projectpartner is. De uiteindelijke winnaars worden op 17 november bekendgemaakt.

Meer informatie over de nominatie van jpylyzer is te vinden op de website van de Digital Preservation Coalition:

http://www.dpconline.org/newsroom/latest-news/1271-dpa-2014finalists

Het volgende artikel is interessant voor wie meer wil weten over jpylyzer, en waarom we zo’n tool eigenlijk nodig hebben:

http://www.kb.nl/research/kb-onderzoek-het-internationale-succes-van-de-jpylyzer-en-wat-is-dat-eigenlijk-voor-ding

Ten slotte is hier de jpylyzer homepage:

http://openplanets.github.io/jpylyzer/

[vimeo 53693082 w=500 h=281]

Too early for audits?

May 4, 2014 / barbarasierman2013 / 0 Comments

Author: Barbara Sierman
Originally posted on: http://digitalpreservation.nl/seeds/too-early-for-audits/

I never realized that the procedure of getting to an ISO standard could take several years, but this is true for two standards related to audit and certification of trustworthy digital repositories. Although we have the ISO 16363 standard on Audit and Certification since 2012, official audits cannot take place against this standard until the related standard Requirements for bodies providing Audit and Certification (ISO 16919) is approved, regulating the appointment of auditors. This standard, similar to the ISO 16363 compiled by the PTAB group in which I participate, was already finished a few years ago, but the ISO review procedure, especially when revisions need to be made, takes long. The latest prediction is that this summer (2014) the ISO 16919 will be approved, after which national standardization bodies can train the future (official) auditors. How many organizations will then apply for an official certification against the ISO standard is not yet clear, but if you’re planning to do so, it might be worthwhile to have a look at the recent report of the European 4C project Quality and trustworthiness as economic determinants in digital curation.

The 4C project (Collaboration to Clarify the Cost of Curation) is looking at the costs and benefits of digital curation. Trustworthiness is one of the “economic determinants” of the 15 they distinguish. As quality is seen as a precondition for trustworthiness, the 4C project focusses in this report on the costs and benefits of “standards based quality assurance” and looks at the 5 current standards related to audit and certification: DSA, Drambora, DIN 31644 of the German nestor group, TRAC and TDR. The first part of the report gives an overview of the current status of these standards. Woven in this overview are some interesting thoughts about audit and certification. It all starts with the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model. The report suggests that the OAIS model is there to help organisations to create processes and workflows (page 18), but I think this does not right to the OAIS model. If one really reads the OAIS standard from cover to cover (and should not we all do that regularly?) one will recognize that the OAIS model expects a repository to do more than designing workflows and processes. Instead, a repository needs to develop a vision on how to do digital preservation and the OAIS model gives directions. But the OAIS model is not a book of recipes and we all are trying to find the best way to translate OAIS into practice. It is this lack of evidence which approach will offer the best preserved digital objects, that made the authors in the report wonder whether an audit that will take place now might lead to a risky outcome (either too much confidence in the repository or too little). They use the phrase “dispositional trust” . “It is the trustor’s belief that it will have a certain goal B in the future and, whenever it will have such a goal and certain conditions obtain, the trustee will perform A and thereby will ensure B.”(p. 22). We expect that our actions will lead to a good result in the future, but this is uncertain as we don’t have an agreed common approach with evidence that this approach will be successful. This is a good point to keep in mind I think as well as the fact that there are many more standards applicable for digital preservation then only the above mentioned. Security standards, record management standards and standards related to the creation of the digital object, to name just a few.

Based on publicly available audit reports (mainly TRAC and DSA, and test audits on TDR) the report describes the main benefits of audits for organisations as

to improve the work processes,
to meet a contractual obligation and
to provide a publicly understandable statement of quality and reliability (p. 29).

These benefits are rather vague but one could argue that these vague notions might lead to more tangible benefits in the future like more (paying) depositors, more funding, etc. By the way, one of the benefits recognized in the test audits was the process of peer review in itself and the ability for the repository management to discuss the daily practices with knowledgeable people.

The authors also tried to get more information about costs related to audit and certification, but had to admit in the end that currently there is hardly any information about the actual costs of an audit and/or get certified (why they mention on page 23 financial figures of 2 specific audits without any context is unclear to me) and base themselves mainly on information that was collected during the test audits that the APARSEN project performed and the taxonomy of costs that was created. For costs we need to wait for more audits and for repositories that are willing to publish all their costs in relation to this exercise.

Reading between the lines, one could easily conclude that it is not recommended to perform audits yet. But especially now the DP community is working hard to discover the best way to protect digital material, it is important for any repository to protect their investments and to avoid that current funding organizations (often tax payers) will back off because of costly mistakes. The APARSEN trial audits were performed by experts in the field and the audited organizations (and these experts) found the discussions and recommendations valuable. As standards are evolving and best practices and tools are developed, a regular audit by experts in the field can certainly safeguard organizations to minimize the risk for the material. These expert auditors need to be aware of the current state of digital preservation, the uncertainties, the risks, the lack of tools and the best practices that are there. The audit results will help the community to understand the issues encountered by the audited organizations, as audit results will be published.

As I noticed while reading a lot of preservation policies for SCAPE, many organisations want to get certified and put this aim in their policies. Publishers want to have their data and publications in trustworthy, certified repositories. But all stakeholders (funders, auditors, repository management) should realise that the outcomes of an audit should be seen in the light of the current state of digital preservation: that of pioneering.

Breaking down walls in digital preservation (Part 2)

April 5, 2014 / ingeangevaare / 0 Comments

Here is part 2 of the digital preservation seminar which identified ways to break down walls between research & development and daily operations in libraries and archives (continued from Breaking down walls in digital preservation, part 1). The seminar was organised by SCAPE and the Open Planets Foundation in The Hague on 2 April 2014. – Report & photographs by Inge Angevaare, visualisations by Elco van Staveren

Ross King picture wall between daily operations and research and development in digital preservation

Ross King of the Austrian Institute of Technology (and of OPF) kicking off the afternoon session by singlehandedly attacking the wall between daily operations and R&D

Experts meet managers

Ross King of the Austrian Institute of Technology described the features of the (technical) SCAPE project which intends to help institutions build preservation environments which are scalable – to bigger files, to more heterogeneous files, to a large volume of files to be processed. King was the one who identified the wall that exists between daily operations in the digital library and research & development (in digital preservation):

The Wall between Production & R&D as identified by Ross King

Zoltan Szatucsket of the Hungarian National Archives shared his experiences with one of the SCAPE tools from a manager’s point of view: ‘Even trying out the Matchbox tool from the SCAPE project was too expensive for us.’ King admitted that the Matchbox case had not yet been entirely successful. ‘But our goal remains to deliver tools that can be downloaded and used in practice.’

Maureen Pennock of the British Library sketched her organisation’s journey to embed digital preservation [link to slides to follow]. Her own digital preservation department (now at 6 fte) was moved around a few times before it was nested in the Collection Care department which was then merged with Collection management. ‘We are now where we should be: in the middle of the Collections department and right next to the Document processing department. And we work closely with IT, strategy development, procurement/licensing and collection security and risk management.’

British Library strategy for digital preservation

The British Library’s strategy calls for further embedding of digital preservation, without taking the formal step of certification

Pennock elaborated on the strategic priorities mentioned above (see slides) by noting that the British Library has chosen not to strive for formal certification within the European Framework (unlike, e.g., the Dutch KB). Instead, the BL intends to hold bi-annual audits to measure progress. The BL intends to ensure that ‘all staff working with digital content understand preservation issues associated with it.’ Questioned by the Dutch KB’s Hildelies Balk, Pennock confirmed that the teaching materials the BL is preparing could well be shared with the wider digital preservation community. Here is Pennock’s concluding comment:

Digital preservation is like a bicycle - one size does not fit everyone, but everyone still recognises it as a library

Digital preservation is like a bicycle – one size doesn’t fit everyone … but everybody still recognises the bicycle

Marcin Werla from the Polish Supercomputing & Networking Centre PSNC provided an overview of the infrastructure PSNC is providing for research institutions and for cultural heritage institutions. It is a distributed network based on the Polish fast (20GB) optical network:

PSCN network for digital libraries and archives

The PSNC network includes facilities for long-term preservation

Interestingly, the network services mostly smaller institutions. The Polish National Library and Archives have built their own systems.

Werla stressed that proper quality control at the production stage is difficult because of the bureaucratic Polish public procurement system.

Heiko Tjalsma of the Dutch research data archive DANS pitched the 4C project which was established to ‘create a better understanding of digital curation costs through collaboration.’

Heiko Tjalsma about the 4C Project to get a grip on digital curation costs

Tjalsma: ‘We can only get a better idea of what digital curation costs by collaborating and sharing data’

At the moment there are several cost models available in the community (see, e.g., earlier posts), but they are difficult to compare. The 4C project intends to a) establish an international curation cost exchange framework, and b) build a Cost Concept Model – which will define what to include in the model and what to exclude.

The need for a clearer picture of curation costs is undisputed, but, Tjalsma added, ‘it is very difficult to gather detailed data, even from colleagues.’ Our organisations are reticent to make their financial data available. And both ‘time’ and ‘scale’ make matter more difficult. The only way to go seems to be anonimisation of data, and for that to work, the project must attract as many participants as possible. So: please register at http://www.4cproject.eu/community-resources/stakeholder-participation – and participate.

Building bridges between expert and manager

The last part of the day was devoted to building bridges between experts and managers. Dirk van Suchodeletz of the University of Freiburg introduced the session with a topic that is often considered an ‘expert-only’ topic: emulation.

Dirk von Suchodeletz: ‘The EaaS project intends to make emulation available for a wider audience by providing it as a service.’

The emulation technique has been around for a while, and it is considered one of the few methods of preservation available for very complex digital objects – but takeup by the community has been slow, because it is seen as too complex for non-experts. The Emulation as a Service project intends to bridge the gap to practical implementation by taking away many of the technical worries from memory institutions. A demo of Emulation as a Service is available for OPF members. Von Suchodeletz encouraged his audience to have a look at it, because the service can only be made to work if many memory institutions decide to participate.

Seminar round table Managing Digital Preservation

Getting ready for the last roundtable discussion about the relationship between experts and managers

How R&D and the library business relate

‘What inspired the EaaS project,’ Hildelies Balk (KB) wanted to know from von Suchodeletz, ‘was it your own interest or was there some business requirement to be met?’ Von Suchodeletz admitted that it was his own research interest that kicked off the project; business requirements entered the picture later.

Birgit Henriksen of the Royal Library, Denmark: ‘We desperately need emulation to preserve the games in our collection, but because it is such a niche, funding is hard to come by.’ Jacqueline Slats of the Dutch National Archives echoed this observation: ‘The NA and the KB together developed the emulation tool Dioscuri, but because there was no business demand, development was halted. We may pick it up again as soon as we start receiving interactive material for preservation.’

This is what happened next, as visualised by Elco van Staveren:

Some highlights from the discussions:

Timing is of the essence. Obviously, R&D is always ahead of operations, but if it is too far ahead, funding will be difficult. Following user needs is no good either, because then R&D becomes mere procurement. Are there any cases of proper just-in-time development? Barbara Sierman of the KB suggested Jpylyzer (translation of Jpylyzer for managers) – the need arose for quality control in a massive TIFF/JP2000 migration at the KB intended to cut costs, and R&D delivered.
Another successful implementation: the Pronom registry. The National Archives had a clear business case for developing it. On the other hand, the GDFR technical registry did not tick the boxes of timeliness, impetus and context.
For experts and managers to work well together managers must start accepting a certain amount of failure. We are breaking new ground in digital preservation, failures are inevitable. Can we make managers understand that even failures make us stronger because the organisation gains a lot of experience and knowledge? And what is an acceptable failure rate? Henriksen suggested that managing expectations can do the trick. ‘Do not expect perfection.’
Some of the panel members (from left to right) Maureen Pennock (British Library), Hildelies Balk (KB), Mies Langelaar (Rotterdam Municipal Archives), Barbara Sierman (KB) and Mette van Essen (Dutch National Archives)
We need a new set of metrics to define success in the ever changing digital world.
Positioning the R&D department within Collections can help make collaboration between the two more effective (Andersen, Pennock). Henriksen: ‘At the Danish Royal Library we have started involving both R&D and collections staff in scoping projects.’
And then again … von Suchodeletz suggested that sometimes a loose coupling between R&D and business can be more effective, because staff in operations can get too bogged down by daily worries.
Sometimes breaking down the wall is just too much to ask, suggested van Essen. We may have to decide to jump the wall instead, at least for the time being.
Bridge builders can be key to making projects succeed, staff members who speak both the languages of operations and of R&D. Balk and Pennock stressed that everybody in the organisation should know about the basics of digital preservation.
Underneath all of the organisation’s doings must lie a clear common vision to inspire individual actions, projects and collaboration.

In conclusion: participants agreed that this seminar had been a fruitful counterweight to technical hackatons in digital preservation. More seminars may follow. If you participated (or read these blogs), please use the commentary box for any corrections and/or follow-up.

‘In an ever changing digital world, we must allow for projects to fail – even failures bring us lots of knowledge.’

Breaking down walls in digital preservation (Part 1)

April 4, 2014 / ingeangevaare / 1 Comment

People & knowledge are the keys to breaking down the walls between daily operations and digital preservation (DP) within our organisations. DP is not a technical issue, but information technology must be embraced as as a core feature of the digital library. Such were some of the conclusions of the seminar organised by the SCAPE project/Open Planets Foundation at the Dutch National Library (KB) and National Archives (NA) on Wednesday 2 April. – Report & photographs by Inge Angevaare, visualisations by Elco van Staveren

Newcomer questions some current practices

Menno Rasch (KB): ‘Do correct me if I am wrong’

Menno Rasch was appointed Head of Operations at the Dutch KB 6 months ago – but ‘I still feel like a newcomer in digital preservation.’ His division includes the Collection Care department which is responsible for DP. But there are close working relationships with the Research and IT departments in the Innovation Division. Rasch’s presentation about embedding DP in business practices in the KB posed some provocative questions:

We have a tendency to cover up our mistakes and failures rather than expose them and discuss them in order to learn as a community. That is what pilots do. The platform is there, the Atlas of Digital Damages set up by the KB’s Barbara Sierman, but it is being underused. Of course lots of data are protected by copyright or privacy regulations, but there surely must be some way to anonimise the data.
In libraries and archives, we still look upon IT as ‘the guys that make tools for us’. ‘But IT = the digital library.’
We need to become more pragmatic. Implementing the OAIS standard is a lot of work – perhaps it is better to take this one step at a time.
‘If you don’t do it now, you won’t do it a year from now.’
‘Any software we build is temporary – so keep the data, not the software.’
Most metadata are reproducible – so why not store them in a separate database and put only the most essential preservation metadata in the OAIS information package? That way we can continue improving the metadata. Of course these must be backed up too (an annual snapshot?), but may tolerate a less expensive storage regime than the objects.
About developments at the KB: ‘To replace our old DIAS system, we are now developing software to handle all of our digital objects – which is an enormous challenge.’

SCAPE/OPF seminar on managing digital preservation, 4 April 2014, The Hague

The SCAPE/OPF seminar on Managing Digital Preservation, 2 April 2014, The Hague

Digital collections and the Titanic

Zoltan Szatucsket from the Hungarian National Archives used the Titanic for his presentation’s metaphor – without necessarily implying that we are headed for the proverbial iceberg, he added. Although, … ‘many elements from the Titanic story can illustrate how we think’:

Titanic received many warnings about ice formations, and yet it was sailing at full speed when disaster struck.
Our ship – the organisation – is quite conservative. It wants to deal with digital records in the same way it deals with paper records. And at the Hungarian National Archives IT and archivist staff are in the same department, which does not work because they do not speak each others’ language.
Zoltan Szatucsket argued that putting together IT staff and archivists in the Hungarian National Archives caused ‘language’ problems; his Danish colleagues felt that in their case close proximity had rather helped improve communications
The captain must acquire new competences. He must learn to manage staff, funding, technology, equipment, etc. We need processes rather than tools.
The crew is in trouble too. Their education has not adapted to digital practices. Underfunding in the sector is a big issue. Strangely enough, staff working with medieval resources were much quicker to adopt digital practices than those working with contemporary material. They seem to want to put off any action until legal transfer to the archives actually occurs (15-20 years).
Echoing Menno Rasch’s presentation, Szatucsket asked the rhetorical question: ‘Why do we not learn from our mistakes?’ A few months after Titanic, another ship went down in similar circumstances
Without proper metadata, objects are lost forever.
Last but not least: we have learned that digital preservation is not a technical challenge. We need to create a complete environment in which to preserve.

Szatucsek at Digital Preservation seminar

Is DP heading for the iceberg as well? Visualisation of Szatucsek’s presentation.

OPF: trust, confidence & communication

Ed Fay was appointed director of the Open Planets Foundation (OPF) only six weeks ago. But he presented a clear vision of how the OPF should function within the community, crack in the middle, as a steward of tools, a champion of open communications, trust & confidence, a broker between commercial and non-commercial interests:

Ed Fay’s vision of the Open Planets Foundation’s role in the digital preservation community

Fay also shared some of his experiences in his former job at the London School of Economics:

Ed Fay London School of Economics Organisation

Ed Fay illustrated how digital preservation was moved around a few times in the London School of Economics Library, until it found its present place in the Library division

So, what works, what doesn’t?

The first round-table discussion was introduced by Bjarne Anderson of the Statsbiblioteket Aarhus (DK). He sketched his institution’s experiences in embedding digital preservation.

Bjarene Andersen Statsbiblioteket Aarhus

Bjarne Andersen (right) conferring with Birgit Henriksen (Danish Royal Library, left) and Jan Dalsten Sorensen (Danish National Archives. ‘SCRUM has helped move things along’

He mentioned the recently introduced SCRUM-based methodology as really having helped to move things along – it is an agile way of working which allows for flexibility. The concept of ‘user stories’ helps to make staff think about the ‘why’. Menno Rasch (KB) agreed: ‘SCRUM works especially well if you are not certain where to go. It is a step-by-step methodology.’

Some other lessons learned at Aarhus:

The responsibility for digital preservation cannot be with the developers implementing the technical solutions
The responsibility needs to be close to ‘the library’
Don’t split the analogue and digital library entirely – the two have quite a lot in common
IT development and research are necessary activities to keep up with a changing landscape of technology
Changing the organisation a few times over the years helped us educate the staff by bringing traditional collection/library staff close to IT for a period of time.

Group discussion. From the left: Jan Dalsten Sorensen (DK), Ed Fay (OPF), Menno Rasch (KB), Marcin Werla (PL), Bjarne Andersen (DK), Elco van Staveren (KB, visualising the discussion), Hildelies Balk (KB) and Ross King (Austria)

And here is how Elco van Staveren visualised the group discussion in real time:

Some highlights from the discussion:

Embedding digital preservation is about people
It really requires open communication channels.
A hierarchical organisation and/or an organisation with silos only builds up the wall. Engaged leadership is called for. And result-oriented incentives for staff rather than hierarchical incentives.
Embedding digital preservation in the organisation requires a vision that is shared by all.
Clear responsibilities must be defined.
Move the budgets to where the challenges are.
The organisation’s size may be a relevant factor in deciding how to organise DP. In large organisations, the wheels move slowly (no. of staff in the Hungarian National Archives 700; British Library 1,500; Austrian National Library 400; KB Netherlands 300, London School of Economics 120, Statsbiblioteket Aarhus 200).
Most organisations favour bringing analogue and digital together as much as possible.
When it comes to IT experts and librarians/archivists learning each other’s languages, it was suggested that maybe hard IT staff need not get too deeply involved in library issues – in fact, some IT staff might consider it bad for their careers. Software developers, however, do need to get involved in library/archive affairs.
Management must also be taught the language of the digital library and digital preservation.

(Continued in Breaking down walls in digital preservation, part 2)

Seminar agenda and links to presentations

Research Data Alliance in Dublin

March 31, 2014 / barbarasierman2013 / 0 Comments

Research Data Alliance (RDA); Dublin 26-28 maart 2014 door Barbara Sierman

Afgelopen week werd in Dublin de 3de plenaire bijeenkomst gehouden van de Research Data Alliance (RDA). Deze internationale organisatie, gebaseerd op vrijwillige deelname, is opgericht in 2013. Onderzoek verandert nu op grote schaal “big data” in de verschillende disciplines wordt ingezet, maar dit biedt ook uitdagingen: het delen van data, het bewaren van de bronnen, hoe te citeren, wie krijgt de “credits” voor dataverzamelingen, hoe linken we data aan publicaties etc. RDA is met name erop gericht om het delen van data, ondanks technische en sociale hindernissen, toch mogelijk maken ten behoeve van wetenschappelijk onderzoek – ook op langere termijn. “The RDA vision is researchers and innovators openly sharing data across technologies, disciplines, and countries to address the grand challenges of society” .

De RDA kent verschillende werkgroepen (met taken die binnen 18 maanden uitgevoerd moeten zijn en die concrete bijdragen leveren aan de implementatie van deze visie) en zogenaamde “interest groups” (IG), waarin bepaalde onderwerpen worden uitgediept. Een ‘interest group” kan uiteindelijk tot een werkgroep leiden.

Waarom neemt de KB deel aan de Research Data Alliance? Ten eerste hebben wij als nationale bibliotheek de onderzoekers ook “big data” te bieden, met onze gedigitaliseerde collecties en ons web archief. Het is belangrijk dat de geesteswetenschappen /humaniora ook meedoen in de discussies vanwege haar rol in de “scholarly communication”. Nu worden de discussies veelal gevoerd door disciplines als aardwetenschappen, “life sciences”, “health”, “ agriculture, space and climate”, die al een veel langere traditie hebben in de omgang met “big data”.

Daarnaast krijgen wij in onze collecties ook te maken met publicaties, die verwijzen naar datasets als bron voor het gedane onderzoek. Denk bijvoorbeeld aan het Internationaal e-Depot, maar ook de publicaties van de Nederlandse universiteiten (DARE) en Nederlandse wetenschappelijke uitgeverijen. Deze datasets zitten soms bij de publicaties (ook wel “verrijkte publicaties” genoemd). Wetenschappelijke uitgevers zoeken oplossingen om ofwel zelf deze data sets te bewaren of bijvoorbeeld te verwijzen naar centrale “data repositories” . Het is belangrijk deze ontwikkelingen te volgen, om een goede (toekomstige) dienstverlening te ontwikkelen voor onze duurzame collecties.

Vanuit de afdeling Onderzoek zit ik in twee groepen: Publishing Data (IG) en Certification of Digital Repositories (IG).

De Publishing Data Interest Group (weliswaar een IG maar met een 18 maanden plan) bestaat uit vier onderdelen:

Costs : de kosten van een data repository en hoe de financiering hiervan voor lange termijn te regelen (hier neemt de KB actief aan deel)
Bibliometrics: hoe wordt de dataset binnen de wetenschappelijke gemeenschap gewaardeerd (citatie indexen etc.)
Services: hoe te linken van publicaties naar data sets, tussen data sets onderling etc. Hier zit de KB niet in, maar de ontwikkelingen zijn belangrijk voor het concept van “verrijkte publicaties” waar ook vanuit de NCDD aan gewerkt wordt (meer daarover in mei)
Workflows: wat zijn de huidige manieren waarop data gepubliceerd worden en hoe kan dit verbeterd worden, rekening houdend met alle belanghebbenden.

De dagen in Dublin waren vooral bedoeld om de collega’s binnen de RDA te informeren over de gedane activiteiten en plannen, te kijken waar overlap met andere werkgroepen en interest groepen is en om binnen de Publishing Data groep de komende activiteiten vast te stellen.

Dit gold ook voor de Certification of Digital Repositories IG. Wil men echt kunnen vertrouwen op de data repositories en de toegankelijk van de data op lange termijn, dan zal er toch een controle mechanisme moeten komen. Dat is de certificering van de repositories als een “trustworthy repository”. Onze collega’s bij DANS zijn hierbij de trekkers , zij hebben immers oorspronkelijk het Data Seal of Approval ontwikkeld. De KB is in deze werkgroep betrokken vanwege mijn activiteiten op het gebied van certificering en de tot stand koming van de standaard ISO 16363 Audit and Certification of Trustworthy Digital Repositories, en waarover ik presenteerde.

Meer informatie over de WG’s en IG’s in de RDA is te vinden op de Research Data Alliance website.

KB Research

Research at the National Library of the Netherlands