Digital Preserva.on: what I wish I knew before I started William Kilbride

Transcription

1 Digital Preserva.on: what I wish I knew before I started William Kilbride william@dpconline.org

2 Bootcamp? Update knowledge Provoke debate Clarify ideas and concepts Prefigure concepts Encourage dialogue Enable greater understanding

3 Programme Digital preserva7on - things I wish knew before I started (William Kilbride) Digital preserva7on in theory and prac7ce (Tom Cramer) The same but different: data storage, business con7nuity management and preserva7on (Bob Rogers) OAIS and emerging standards: what does success look like? (David GiarreRa) 1000 Roundtable tea and coffee Wrangling digital chaos: characterisa7on and ingest (Helen Tibbo) Understanding requirements and implementa7on from a vendor perspec7ve (Mark Evans) How to avoid inven7ng the wheel (again): standards- based procurement and development (Don Post) Round table of speakers (chaired by WK and DP) thanks and close

4 But what do you want to hear about?

5 Digital Preserva.on: what I wish I knew before I started It won t do itself It won t go away Don t wait for perfec.on Two basic lessons Two lessons from experience Re- thinking the ques.on

6 Digital Preserva-on is not the same as storage Knowing what you have Making it useful Maintaining poten7al Avoiding obsolescence

7 Digital preserva-on systems are subject to the same obsolescence as the objects they safeguard. Modular Transparent Ongoing monitoring Recursion of process

8 The problems are more subtle than we realised a decade ago e.g. file format obsolescence Changing file formats Robust formats Prolifera7ng formats Conformant containers Units of informa7on

9 How to pick a winner... Adop7on Dependency Disclosure Transparency Metadata support Interoperability Complexity Stability Rights management Todd, M 2009 File formats for preserva7on, DPC Technology Watch Report 02/09, online at hrp:///advice/technology- watch- reports.html

10 How to pick a winner... beyond and poten.ally over- wri.ng the criteria... repository managers should align the recogni7on and weigh7ng of criteria with a clear preserva.on strategy that ar7culates the purpose of the repository and the needs of its designated community; Todd, M 2009 File formats for preserva7on, DPC Technology Watch Report 02/09, online at hrp:///advice/technology- watch- reports.html

11 How to pick a winner... Producer Archive Content Content Identification Identification Feature extract Assessment Package SIP Unpackage Feature extract Consistency Assessment Ingest Validation Validation Policy rules Metadata Policy rules Metadata Metadata... it s not going to be about obsolescence so much as workflow and capacity

12 Digital Preserva.on as a discipline Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech Daun7ng challenge Decade of research and development Replete with jargon Deliberately opaque Turf war between professions Disconnected from reality The last decade has shown defini.vely that thinking of fancy words is not the same as solving problems

13 You don t need to understand or do all of this to get started.... and it doesn t all have to exist at the same 7me

14 Digital preserva.on is rocket science...? No: it s just not finished yet Our biggest challenge is capacity. Niche to business- as- usual

15 Digital preserva.on makes bleak reading

16 Let s restate the problem Digital data has value. It is an asset. It has poten7al and creates new opportuni7es. Use gives rise to direct and indirect outcomes....but... Deployment depends on sodware, hardware and people. Sodware, hardware and people change....therefore... Access is not guaranteed without (some) ac7on Value, opportunity, impact not guaranteed

17 Digital preserva7on is not just about data : Digital preserva7on is not just about access : Digital preserva7on is not just about risk : it s about people and opportunity