Digiprojects and the Cornell Digital Imaging Tutorial
Three of the projects that I learned about from reading the blog entries in digitizationblog include the Fedora and the Preservation of University Records Project, the File Format and Media Migration Pilot Service (FFMM), and the CIHR Policy in Development. I will discuss what the projects are, identify the issues, and discuss them within the context of the Cornell tutorial.
1. Fedora and the Preservation of University Records Project
This project is a research grant project of the Digital Collections and Archives of Tufts University and Manuscripts and Archives of Yale University that sought “to combine electronic records preservation research and theory with digital library research and practice.” Specifically, this project looked at using the Fedora digital repository system to determine whether it has “the ability to serve as an electronic records preservation system.”
Findings were that
(Glick, Wilczek and Dockins).
Therefore, the Tufts-Yale project created “three main products” to provide baseline guides: “the requirements for recordkeeping systems and preservation activities, the Ingest Guide, and the Maintain Guide”. However, the project results acknowledge that these baseline guides “all suggest areas of further work.”
Issues that I identified in this project, that were also conceptually discussed in the Cornell digital imaging tutorial, include: preservation of digital records and content, technical infrastructure management and management policies.
From the Cornell digital imaging tutorial, I learned about digital preservation whose goal “is to maintain the ability to display, retrieve, and use digital collections in the face of rapidly changing technological and organizational infrastructures and elements.” Preservation decisions are considered an “integral part” of digitization projects, because they coincide with any “long-term retention plans.” There are many technical and organizational and administrative challenges associated with preservation.
The first challenge is technical infrastructure management, or file management, which is done by “through careful evaluation, and the avoidance of unique, proprietary solutions.”
According to the Cornell tutorial, file management “consists of a set of interrelated steps designed to ensure that files can be readily identified, organized, accessed, and maintained.”
Finally, to address the organizational/administrative challenges, management policies are crucial because they
According to Cornell, part of this management policy is to find a “holistic approach that recognizes the interdependencies between technical and organizational components”, one example of which is OAIS (Open Archival Information System).
I learned about OAIS which, according to Cornell, is a “reference model [that] provides a framework for long-term digital preservation and access, including terminology and concepts for describing and comparing archival architectures.”
The OAIS framework was built upon such holistic management principles, in order to find “practical approaches to digital preservation”. In the Fedora Tufts-Yale project, OAIS provided the framework. Furthermore, “the OAIS Reference Model, the requirements, the Ingest and Maintain guides, the resources and services that support the guides, and the implementation of the guides should be viewed as a tightly related set of steps that build on each other” (Glick, Wilczek and Dockins).
2. File Format and Media Migration Pilot Service (FFMM)
This project offered to “Cornell’s scholarly community, the Cornell University Library Research and Assessment Services unit” is a free service whose goal is to “get a better read on the scope and seriousness of digital obsolescence in the unmanaged digital holdings.”
Issues that I identified in this project, similar to the Tufts-Yale project, include: digital preservation, technical infrastructure management, and project planning and management.
From the Cornell tutorial, I learned about digital preservation in both Technical Infrastructure and Strategies of Preservation.
However, the technical infrastructure, or file management, in this project was unique in that the goal was to find old or obsolete technical components (hardware and software) to preserve digital data from obsolete media (like old floppy disks).
Source: http://www.rlg.org/en/page.php?Page_ID=20987#article1
This illustrates one of the technical challenges in digital preservation technical infrastructure, because the most up-to-date tools which institutions usually look to invest in, also have “limited backward compatibility.” This project demanded the reverse, which posed its own challenges: the project team resorting to going through their scrap heap and purchasing equipment from ebay. The focus of the digital preservation technical strategies was performing migrations.
3. CIHR (Canadian Institutes of Health Research) Policy in Development - Access to Products of Research
This project’s focus is creating “a process to develop a research policy that will promote access to the knowledge and resources generated from CIHR-funded research” by implementing a formal institutional policy that requires, rather than only encourages, researchers to make their results “publicly available.” The goal of this policy “is to position Canada as a world leader in the creation and use of knowledge for health benefits” by making sure this information is “disseminated as widely as possible so that all parties benefit from these research outcomes.” This digitization project, unlike the other projects, involves outsourcing. However, it still has some of the same issues as in house projects and digitization in general has allowed information to be widely disseminated, which is the ultimate goal of this policy.
Issues that I identified in this project include legal restrictions and project management.
Similar to any digitization selection process, legal restrictions must be identified at the project onset. CIHR has identified open access eligible materials as:
The project management consists of a governing Advisory Committee, whose first step is an online survey concerning “the general scope and content of a proposed policy” the results of which are to be considered by the committee in their policy development.
Furthermore, the project management approach is to outsource the information to any “Open Access Initiative compliant digital archive” which is CHIR’s most effective “publishing cost-recovery model” (Harnad).
From the Cornell tutorial, I learned about the advantages and disadvantages of the outsourcing management approach. Specifically,
(Cornell University Library/ Research Department)
Although the OAI model may be the management approach chosen by institutions like CHIR, there is a major debate over the fiscal soundness of OAI publishers. Statistics have shown that “41 percent of OA journals are losing money, 24 percent are breaking even and only 35 percent are in profit” (Data Conversion Laboratory). This could have a chilling effect on the open access management approach, because the OAI publishing model may not be "reliable" publishing vendors. It will be an interesting case study to see how well the new CHIR development policy functions.
References:
Entlich, R. and Buckley, E. “Digging Up Bits of the Past: Hands-on With Obsolescence.” RLG DigiNews 10(5), October 15, 2006. Accessed 25 November 2006, online: http://www.rlg.org/en/page.php?Page_ID=20987#article1
Glick, K., Wilczek, E., and Dockins, R. “Fedora and the Preservation of University Records Project.” RLG DigiNews 10(5), October 15, 2006. Accessed 25 November 2006, online: http://www.rlg.org/en/page.php?Page_ID=20987
Harnad, S. “CIHR Proposes 99.99% Optimal OA Self-Archiving Mandate." Open Access Archivangelism, October 12, 2006. Accessed 28 November 2006, online: http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/144-CIHR-Proposes-99.99-Optimal-OA-Self-Archiving-Mandate.html
“Moving Theory into Practice: Digital Imaging Tutorial.” Cornell University Library/ Research Department. Accessed 23 November 2006, online: http://www.library.cornell.edu/preservation/tutorial/contents.html
“Open Access debate still rages.” Data Conversion Laboratory. Accessed 29 November 2006, online: http://www.dclab.com/open_access_debate_still_rages.asp
1. Fedora and the Preservation of University Records Project
This project is a research grant project of the Digital Collections and Archives of Tufts University and Manuscripts and Archives of Yale University that sought “to combine electronic records preservation research and theory with digital library research and practice.” Specifically, this project looked at using the Fedora digital repository system to determine whether it has “the ability to serve as an electronic records preservation system.”
Findings were that
“Even though some preservation policies may be articulated and managed through Fedora, an institution still must formulate these policies—they are not pre-set in Fedora. Rather than an out-of-the-box, limited repository solution, Fedora is a repository architecture upon which an institution can shape a repository in many different ways. Thus, the suitability of Fedora as the basis of a preservation system depends significantly on its implementation.”
(Glick, Wilczek and Dockins).
Therefore, the Tufts-Yale project created “three main products” to provide baseline guides: “the requirements for recordkeeping systems and preservation activities, the Ingest Guide, and the Maintain Guide”. However, the project results acknowledge that these baseline guides “all suggest areas of further work.”
Issues that I identified in this project, that were also conceptually discussed in the Cornell digital imaging tutorial, include: preservation of digital records and content, technical infrastructure management and management policies.
From the Cornell digital imaging tutorial, I learned about digital preservation whose goal “is to maintain the ability to display, retrieve, and use digital collections in the face of rapidly changing technological and organizational infrastructures and elements.” Preservation decisions are considered an “integral part” of digitization projects, because they coincide with any “long-term retention plans.” There are many technical and organizational and administrative challenges associated with preservation.
The first challenge is technical infrastructure management, or file management, which is done by “through careful evaluation, and the avoidance of unique, proprietary solutions.”
According to the Cornell tutorial, file management “consists of a set of interrelated steps designed to ensure that files can be readily identified, organized, accessed, and maintained.”
Finally, to address the organizational/administrative challenges, management policies are crucial because they
“boil down to correlating resources and processes with project goals. Project goals, such as enhancing access or promoting efficiencies must be translated into project deliverables, such as digital image files, accompanying metadata, and Web-accessible databases.”
According to Cornell, part of this management policy is to find a “holistic approach that recognizes the interdependencies between technical and organizational components”, one example of which is OAIS (Open Archival Information System).
I learned about OAIS which, according to Cornell, is a “reference model [that] provides a framework for long-term digital preservation and access, including terminology and concepts for describing and comparing archival architectures.”
The OAIS framework was built upon such holistic management principles, in order to find “practical approaches to digital preservation”. In the Fedora Tufts-Yale project, OAIS provided the framework. Furthermore, “the OAIS Reference Model, the requirements, the Ingest and Maintain guides, the resources and services that support the guides, and the implementation of the guides should be viewed as a tightly related set of steps that build on each other” (Glick, Wilczek and Dockins).
2. File Format and Media Migration Pilot Service (FFMM)
This project offered to “Cornell’s scholarly community, the Cornell University Library Research and Assessment Services unit” is a free service whose goal is to “get a better read on the scope and seriousness of digital obsolescence in the unmanaged digital holdings.”
Issues that I identified in this project, similar to the Tufts-Yale project, include: digital preservation, technical infrastructure management, and project planning and management.
From the Cornell tutorial, I learned about digital preservation in both Technical Infrastructure and Strategies of Preservation.
However, the technical infrastructure, or file management, in this project was unique in that the goal was to find old or obsolete technical components (hardware and software) to preserve digital data from obsolete media (like old floppy disks).
This illustrates one of the technical challenges in digital preservation technical infrastructure, because the most up-to-date tools which institutions usually look to invest in, also have “limited backward compatibility.” This project demanded the reverse, which posed its own challenges: the project team resorting to going through their scrap heap and purchasing equipment from ebay. The focus of the digital preservation technical strategies was performing migrations.
3. CIHR (Canadian Institutes of Health Research) Policy in Development - Access to Products of Research
This project’s focus is creating “a process to develop a research policy that will promote access to the knowledge and resources generated from CIHR-funded research” by implementing a formal institutional policy that requires, rather than only encourages, researchers to make their results “publicly available.” The goal of this policy “is to position Canada as a world leader in the creation and use of knowledge for health benefits” by making sure this information is “disseminated as widely as possible so that all parties benefit from these research outcomes.” This digitization project, unlike the other projects, involves outsourcing. However, it still has some of the same issues as in house projects and digitization in general has allowed information to be widely disseminated, which is the ultimate goal of this policy.
Issues that I identified in this project include legal restrictions and project management.
Similar to any digitization selection process, legal restrictions must be identified at the project onset. CIHR has identified open access eligible materials as:
1. physical products of research (i.e., cell lines, DNA libraries, PCR primers);
2. structural and functional data typically deposited in public databases (i.e., genomic data, DNA sequences, protein sequences);
3. peer-reviewed published results.
The project management consists of a governing Advisory Committee, whose first step is an online survey concerning “the general scope and content of a proposed policy” the results of which are to be considered by the committee in their policy development.
Furthermore, the project management approach is to outsource the information to any “Open Access Initiative compliant digital archive” which is CHIR’s most effective “publishing cost-recovery model” (Harnad).
From the Cornell tutorial, I learned about the advantages and disadvantages of the outsourcing management approach. Specifically,
“outsourcing is viable if an institution has a good understanding of the near- and long-term goals of an imaging initiative and can fully specify imaging, metadata, and derivative requirements; locate reliable vendors; evaluate products and services; adopt policies and procedures for various functions; and define institutional and vendor responsibilities.”
(Cornell University Library/ Research Department)
Although the OAI model may be the management approach chosen by institutions like CHIR, there is a major debate over the fiscal soundness of OAI publishers. Statistics have shown that “41 percent of OA journals are losing money, 24 percent are breaking even and only 35 percent are in profit” (Data Conversion Laboratory). This could have a chilling effect on the open access management approach, because the OAI publishing model may not be "reliable" publishing vendors. It will be an interesting case study to see how well the new CHIR development policy functions.
References:
Entlich, R. and Buckley, E. “Digging Up Bits of the Past: Hands-on With Obsolescence.” RLG DigiNews 10(5), October 15, 2006. Accessed 25 November 2006, online: http://www.rlg.org/en/page.php?Page_ID=20987#article1
Glick, K., Wilczek, E., and Dockins, R. “Fedora and the Preservation of University Records Project.” RLG DigiNews 10(5), October 15, 2006. Accessed 25 November 2006, online: http://www.rlg.org/en/page.php?Page_ID=20987
Harnad, S. “CIHR Proposes 99.99% Optimal OA Self-Archiving Mandate." Open Access Archivangelism, October 12, 2006. Accessed 28 November 2006, online: http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/144-CIHR-Proposes-99.99-Optimal-OA-Self-Archiving-Mandate.html
“Moving Theory into Practice: Digital Imaging Tutorial.” Cornell University Library/ Research Department. Accessed 23 November 2006, online: http://www.library.cornell.edu/preservation/tutorial/contents.html
“Open Access debate still rages.” Data Conversion Laboratory. Accessed 29 November 2006, online: http://www.dclab.com/open_access_debate_still_rages.asp
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