Putting people at the centre of digital preservation Sophie - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Putting people at the centre

• f digital preservation

Sophie Shilling Digital Archivist, Royal Historical Society of Victoria

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The digital information paradox

• Most of us tend to worry that if something is on the internet, it

will be there forever

• Simultaneously, we’re warned of a Digital Dark Age
• This is a lot of hype and anxiety to deal with before we can

begin to think rationally about what it means

• Information managers have a useful set of skills to deal with

digital information

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What is a digital file?

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management managmenet

Source: Jim Salter CC BY-SA 3

The problem with digital

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Acceptable formats for preservation

Sophie Shilling, 2018. Collecting and Preserving Digital Materials, Federation of Australian Historical Societies.

Digital Preservation Guiding Axioms

As described in The Theory and Craft of Digital Preservation, by Trevor Owens.

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The time to start taking actions was yesterday

• There are easy, practical, pragmatic things anyone can do to

mitigate the risk of loss

• Make backups
• Install a free fixity checker
• Start describing in a spreadsheet, or in a .txt file, or on a piece
• f paper

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Work with a shovel, not tweezers

• The amount of stuff is overwhelming sometimes
• Batch processes
• Normalization

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Digital preservation as risk mitigation

• Understand the risk of losing content
• Understand the risk of losing the ability to view content
• Identify the most pressing risks
• Make the best use of the available resources

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Digital object boundaries are fuzzy

• Digital objects tend to link between each other
• Hardware and software are intertwined
• Isolating a digital object can reduce its authenticity

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If it’s not described, it’s not preserved

• Also known as hoarding
• Discoverability and accessibility are key parts of digital

preservation

• Arrangement
• Description

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Digital collection/object/dataset?

• What is a website?
• Is it an object in and of itself?
• Is it a collection of webpages?

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Backing up is not digital preservation

• Backups are a very reasonable, low-resource intensive, easy

first step that everyone should take

• At least three copies on different media in different locations
• Backups: short-term concerns for being able to restore data
• Digital preservation: long-term concerns of ensuring access in

the future

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Nothing has been preserved, there are

• nly things being preserved
• Digital preservation is ongoing work
• It’s a commitment of people and resources
• The work is never finished

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Lifecycle model

Digital Curation Centre’s DCC Curation Lifecycle Model. www.dcc.ac.uk

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The answer to nearly all digital preservation questions is “it depends”

• Two identical collections will be preserved differently if their

future use is different

• Identify the end user
• Any decisions should be taken from the standpoint of your

end user

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A repository is not a piece of software

• Financial resources
• Hardware
• Software
• Staff time
• Skills
• Policies
• Planning
• Tools

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Tools can hinder as much as they can help

• RHSV’s digital repository uses open source software
• Start small and scale up
• Build on wins
• Don’t try and do everything all at once
• Project-based work

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Digital preservation and collection development policy should be intertwined

• What can be easily preserved should be what you collect
• For example, you wouldn’t collect clothing if you didn’t have

the expertise in conservation to care for it

• What you can preserve is what you should collect

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Think like a futurist

• Our anticipated risks and threats are based on current

technologies

• Our efforts now reflect our current resources and current

anticipated risks

• Always have an exit strategy

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Digital preservation has been framed as a highly technical subject, but this has to stop

• A highly technical framing of digital

preservation has resulted in so many smaller collections avoiding it altogether

• Don’t wait for one expert – find the experts

you need

• Utilise the expertise in your institution
• There needs to be others “at the table“ –

archivists can’t do it alone

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“Skilled workforce” doesn’t have to mean the [workers] have to have the skills… access to people with skills to work with is also an option….

programmers project managers web developers software developers data architects info disco experts volunteers librarians archivists IT support

The Digital Preservation Table

Seats at the digital preservation table, adapted from Nancy McGovern & Clifford Lynch, IDCC2019.

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OAIS Functional Model

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Digital preservation has been framed as a highly technical subject, but this has to stop

You may think that digital content is easy to keep forever. The reality is that digital collections, like any type of collection, need constant maintenance.

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Reasons that digital content can no longer be accessed include:

• the file format is outdated (e.g. a

WordPerfect file)

• the carrier is outdated (e.g. a floppy disc)
• the required software is not supported or

available

• the computer capable of running the

software is not available (e.g. iMac)

• the file or drive is corrupt
• or a combination of these factors

format obsolescence bit rot software

• bsolescence

hardware

• bsolescence

carrier obsolescence

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Computers and software can become obsolete in mere months because the IT sector is highly

• innovative. Technologies are being updated

constantly, and as newer versions of formats,

• perating systems, and hardware are created,

preserving digital objects that rely on this changing infrastructure becomes more and more difficult.

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Regular checks need to be carried out on infrequently used digital content to make sure that it hasn’t changed, and can still be read by a computer. Simply backing up digital content isn’t going to cut it if the infrastructure to view it keeps changing. The goalposts are always moving.

fixity

Digital content is machine-dependent. You cannot simply pick up a hard drive and see what is on it.

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For these reasons, digital content will not last forever. In fact, in some ways paper is more stable than digital content. If paper degrades, it is still possible to read some of it, but if a digital

• bject degrades, it may not be possible to view it at all.

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But we can’t just replicate digital content in a physical format because digital content often links to other digital content. For example printing the pages of a website will change the way it can be interacted with. This linking and interdependence adds yet another layer of complexity to preserving digital content.

digital object boundaries are fuzzy

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Some steps we can take to keep digital content accessible include:

• save copies in file formats that are widely

used and/or open source

• apply checksums (a digital fingerprint) to

see if a file has degraded or changed

• scan files for viruses
• package files with the information

necessary to open them

• back up

migration and normalization fixity metadata

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Does this seem like a lot of work? It is. It requires specialist software and tools and

• ngoing efforts because the goalposts keep
• moving. Nothing HAS BEEN preserved; there

are only objects BEING preserved.

legacy

Digital preservation requires collaboration and a wide variety of skills. Digital preservation requires funding. Digital preservation is important. Digital preservation is urgent.

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Thank you

Sophie Shilling @sophiephies sophiedshilling@gmail.com www.sophieshilling.com Download my guide Collecting and Preserving Digital Materials at www.history.org.au

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Sources and further reading

Australasia Preserves. http://australasiapreserves.org/. Barrett, Brian, wired.com. 2019. “Microsoft’s ebook apocalypse shows the dark side of DRM”. https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-ebook-apocalypse-drm/. Corrado, EM, Sandy, HM. 2019, Digital Preservation for Libraries, Archives & Museums 2e. Digital Curation Centre, ‘DCC Curation Lifecycle Model’. http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/curation-lifecycle-model. Digital Preservation Coalition. https://www.dpconline.org/. GLAM Peak. (2018). Digital Access to Collections Workshop Manual v4. Harrower, Natalie & Cassidy, Kathryn. 2017, ‘Why storage is not preservation: a conversation, surrounded by conservation. https://www.dri.ie/why-storage-not- preservation-conversation-surrounded-conservation. Harvey, D. R. (2012). Preserving Digital Materials. Boston, De Gruyter Saur Internet Archive, ‘Wayback Machine’. http://web.archive.org/ McGovern, Nancy & Lynch, Clifford. IDCC2019. Museum of Obsolete Media. 2019. https://obsoletemedia.org/. National Archives of Australia ([2018]). "Preservation File Formats." Retrieved 8/08/2018, 2018, from http://www.naa.gov.au/information-management/managing-information- andrecords/preserving/long-term-file-formats.aspx Owens, Trevor. 2018, The Theory and Craft of Digital Preservation. Shilling, Sophie, 2018. Collecting and Preserving Digital Materials, Federation of Australian Historical Societies.

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