Digital Preservation Policy, Procedure and Practice - Essay Example

Digital Preservation policy, procedure and practice in a small archive "As the manager of a small archive you are concerned about establishing policies, procedures and practices to ensure that both born-digital material and analogue items (paper-based and sound recordings) currently being digitized by the archive are future-proofed, that is , created and archived in such a way as to ensure, as far as possible, their long-term survival." Mission and Objectives This note lays down the policy documents for short and long term preservation of digitized items in a small university archive in Hong Kong. The policy document shows the procedures and policies of preservation of such digital material to ensure that all kinds of digital items, whether originally digital or originally paper based are properly preserved for a long time. Considering that the University archive and library in Hong Kong has a number of digital and non-digital collections in book, journals, printed material, online and CD formats, a policy document could be drawn that would suggest the uses and application of the process of digitization, justifying why it should be used to preserve the archived material over time. Digitization helps in modernization or a sort of upgrade of the format of any document, as paper document could be upgraded to technologically advance digital version. Digitization helps in preserving documents in a CD, or in other data storage hardware such as floppy disks, USB storage devices, magnetic tape, punch cards etc. This is very economical in terms of space as books take up a lot of space in a library and also in terms of time as books may get lost or tear off or become damage over the years. Although CDs and other hardware are also prone to loss or damage the space occupied being less and the fact that many large books can be easily transformed digitally in one small piece of hardware device, makes digitization the preferred method for storage. The process of digitization can also facilitate research and can help teachers and students to access research materials through computerized search rather than going through the search process manually which is time consuming. The definition of digital preservation could be given as follows. It is usually considered as: The series of managed activities necessary to ensure continued access to digital materials for as long as necessary (as indicated and relevant for this project). Digital preservation refers to all of the actions required to maintain access to digital materials beyond the limits of media failure or technological change (Jones & Beagrie 2001, p.10) Thus digital preservation could be considered as that activity that could help manage digital and non-digital material through transformation to digital format for a long period of time. The important element of digitization would be content of the material, the audience for which these are preserved, the time for which materials are preserved and the techniques required for maintaining the digitization process. The content that would be preserved for the future generation and apart from economy of time and space, and aiding faster research process, the archiving and cataloguing of digital products and items becomes far easier than non digitized printed material archived manually. However the challenges to digital preservation would be proper funding and finance, the time consuming process and the staff required for digitizing the vast amount of non-digitized and printed material, and the possibilities of computer snags, technical problems, loss of data and damage of disks and other storage hardware (Galloway, 2003; Deegan 2006). There are also sociological and management challenges and developing workable responses to the project is also a challenge in itself. Role and Responsibility The benefits and challenges of digital preservation of items in the archive have been given and this brings into focus the roles and responsibilities of all those who are involved in this project namely the patrons and sponsors, the school finance, IT and administrative departments, the preservation working group and library and archive staff. The Patrons and Sponsors could help overcome the funding challenge by providing adequate finances to maintain the costs of the process that involve buying and using hardware for the storage process. The finance department of the university could handle the accounts and the funds and the administrative departments would be responsible for recruiting working group staff. The library and the preservation group could then provide a blueprint for preservation of the documents to the administration and also inform the departments on its progress. Scope of Preserved Items The preserved items for the benefits of teachers, students, scholars, researchers alike could range from anything like printed articles and published papers from journals and magazines, online content, newspaper and media releases, books which could be transformed to digital format and student theses and dissertations that would finally serve as text resources for other students and researchers. Resources that are generated with office applications such as excel files, powerpoint presentations, access, word or outlook files can also be stored in digitized format quite easily and would also be the best method of storage. Electronic records ore university records in electronic format could be maintained of financial and administrative documents that need to be archived not for research purposes but as resources for the university history and accounts. Datasets such as large amounts of data as through census, or data for research and statistical purposes and government data sources or other university databases could also be maintained as possible resources for digitization and would be of use to present and future students. Web and online resources like online magazines and other important online content could be stored as research resources. Along with this audio and video files, image files and recordings of speech or video conferences could be adequately used as digital data or material suitable for storage and these would well specify as the content of what is being preserved through the digitization project. However it has to be remembered that digitized items may have shorter life span as newer versions of software and hardware may not be compatible with old hardware that maintains stored data. Priorities for Preserved Items It is important to select what material would be preserved and for how long depending on the life span and the importance of the documents. All appraisal and selection decisions for preparation and storage of document could be made by the library and preservation workgroup and it is important to classify which documents will be preserved indefinitely, which will be preserved for a reasonable period of time and which others could be discarded after their working life is over. This is because there are limitations to preserving all documents indefinitely. First of all digital products need regular upgrading and there be incompatible formats and although space required is limited, continual funding for items stored for an indefinite period of time may become difficult (Rothenberg, 1999). Not only is it important to identify the correct version that should be preserved as there may be multiple versions of documents available especially in digital format, but also it is necessary to preserve the significant parts, key elements or essence of a document, especially if such a document is too large or available solely in printed format. A decision for the best preservation policy regarding which version or what elements of an important document should be preserved could be largely made by the head of the preservation working group and the head of the library and a collaboration of all university administrative departments would also be expected in order to sort out the prioritization process of the digitization. When the data for transfer and storage are chosen, a technical strategy must be sorted out by the University's IT department as to whether the data could be transformed through emulation or simply migration and how much of data has to be manipulated from non digital to digital format and how much will have to be upgraded to a better digital format. Ways/Formats to Preserve Different Types of Items Which format(s) Why Text resources e.g. Theses, Dissertations e.g. PDF, TXT, RTF, DOC, TIFF, ZIP file These are the most compatible versions of file formats available for text based resources Resources generated using office application e.g. Power point Presentations XML, PPT, XLS, DOC These formats and styles are best suited for statistical data and representation Electronic records e.g. emails, financial and administrative documents PHP, HTML, RFC, LIT, CHM, GIF, XML, XLS Electronic records are best stored on excel and tabulated or stored as in these versions for easier access Datasets e.g. census data, epidemiological study data XLS, ZIP, PDF, XSD, ASCII, CSV Large amounts of data and all kinds of statistical/epidemiological data could be stored in these formats to economize space and for easy accessibility and understanding/calculation Audio, video and image files e.g. speech recordings, conference videos MPEG, BMP, JIF, WMV, AVI, MPG, MIDI, ADX MP3, WAV, WMA, PNG JPEG, TIFF JPG files These are the widely available and most suitable audio/video file formats Web resources XML, HTML, RSS, PDF TIFF, RIFF, ADX, TIFF, RAM, RAR, AVI, BIN, CSS, EXE, JPG, PNG Web resources are best stored in accordance with the formats of the elements in web pages. Images are usually stored as jpg/png files and page stored as html format Using Metadata to Manage Digital Information Metadata or data on the stored data available could be used to manage the vast information available in the archive. After transfer and transformation of files from non-digital to digital format or conversion to other upgraded and easily accessible file formats, it is important to tabulate all of this information in a way that the stored and digitized data could be easily accessible. Drawing up metadata through cataloguing, tabulation and building an information resource on library website or especially on computers at the archive is again a significant and huge task. However having a metadata to sort out the correct research resource is absolutely essential in any study or library centre. Metadata and the actual content together account for the complexity of storing documents in different file formats (Rosenthal, 2005). The metadata associated with any record should provide a record of the audit trail, providing an access log, and in case of documents, the date of publication of the documents or record, number of pages or length of the documents and indicate any changes in the documents or record that may have occurred. The creation of metadata and using software application tools are activities that will have to be supervised by the IT department as also the library and working group. Associated metadata of any record usually deals with provenance, brief descriptive information of the record, rights management related to the record, security level of using the data and so on, and associated technical data could also be suggested to assist in the retrieval and display of the available information. Several types of metadata schemes are used for digital preservation. The OAIS (Open Archival Information System reference model) is one of the most widely accepted and used archival systems mainly for digital information and has also been adopted as an ISO standard. This metadata reference model addresses information regarding archival storage, data management, access and distribution as well as migration and transfer of digital information to new forms and formats as well as information on software for information preservation, and the exchange of digital information among archives and libraries. It has been described as 'the first international standard in digital preservation' (Beagrie, 2003, p.5). Information Access and Intellectual Property Administrative metadata provides technical information on the file and record stored and also information about intellectual property rights of the document concerned. Although access to information is made easy across the web and also in an archive through digitization, intellectual property laws are followed in its conversions and inadvertent changes if any. To ensure that original document are not significantly altered in the digitized versions or upgraded versions, copyright and IP laws will have to be followed thoroughly and this could be a challenge in the process as well (Howell, 2006, Deegan et al, 2006). Owners of intellectual property rights, writers, publishers, and published researchers should keep in mind that their work should meet the requirements of the digital age and they should also try to develop sustainable digital products for the new media and markets. For updating, upgrading, changing and transforming or converting the formats of files and documents, the IP issues will have to be taken seriously and all files should be as close to the original version as possible and any alterations should be taken note of. In certain case of copyrighted materials for manuscripts, photographs, recordings the permission of the copyright holder may be required for digitization and conversion and this might be a time consuming and tedious process. Risk management The potential risks of archiving and the severity or likelihood of the risks would have to be examined before drawing up a risk management plan for the project. Development of a risk management plan is only possible through identification of the risks first and then figuring out the strategy for countering these risks. Software changes, hardware failure during the process or after the completion of the archiving, external attack through viruses in the system, operator or operations errors, communication errors between staff, hardware and software obsolescence and natural disaster as well as funding problems, economic and organizational or administrative failure could be some of the potential risks that can bring down the project or lead to its disruption (National Archives, 2007; CUL, 2003). These are possible risks which have to be identified and tackled in greater detail at every step by staff and administrative members alike. Monitoring and review of policy With the approval and application of the policy, some form of periodic review and monitoring of the responsibilities followed will have to be done to consider how far the policy has been successful. The policy document will thus have to be a guideline for the archiving group and University. Conclusion It can be concluded that drawing up a policy will have to meet with proper implementation of policy guidelines and the decision making process regarding archiving will be based on the policy documentation. Several issues have been highlighted here including the IP issues, software problems and obsolescence, risks and risk management, management of the digital information, the roles and responsibility of the group and other university administration and the benefits of digitizing information and its uses for future research. This policy document emphasizes on the process of digitization which is simply the most technologically sound and advisable method of storage of university records and data that should be accessible to the future generations. Bibliography Beagrie, N. (2003). National digital preservation initiatives: An overview of developments in Australia , France , the Netherlands , and the United Kingdom and of related international activity . Washington , D.C. : Council on Library and Information Resources and Library of Congress. Cornell University Library (2003). Digital preservation tutorial. Retrieved 19 Nov, 2007, from Cornell University Library website: http://www.library.cornell.edu/iris/tutorial/dpm/terminology/preservation.html Deegan, M. & Tanner, S. (2006). Digital preservation . London: Facet Publishing. Galloway, P. (2003). Preservation of digital objects. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology , 38, 549. Howell, A. (2006). Digital preservation policies: A guide to their creation and management. Retrieved 19 Nov, 2007 , from Preservation Solutions Australia website: http://www.preservationsolutionsaustralia.com.au/papers/ J0608-061121DigPresPolicyPowerpoint.pdf Jones, M. & Beagrie, N. (2001). Preservation management of digital materials: A handbook . London: British Library. National Archives of Australia . Business continuity planning for digital records. Retrieved 19 Nov, 2007, from National Archives of Australia website: http://www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/er/guidelines/9-continuity.html National Library of Wales - Policy and Strategy, 2003, Retrieved 19 Nov, 2007 http://www.bl.uk/services/npo/pdf/bliwb.pdf Rosenthal, D.S.H. et al. (2005). Requirements for digital preservation systems. D-Lib Magazine , 11(11). Retrieved 19 Nov, 2007 , from D-Lib Magazine website: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november05/rosenthal/11rosenthal.html Rothenberg, J. (1999). Ensuring the longevity of digital information . Washington , D.C. : Council on Library and Information Resources. Retrieved 19 Nov, 2007 , from CLIR website: www.clir.org/pubs/archives/ensuring.pdf The British Library - Digital Preservation Policy, 2002-2003, Retrieved 19 Nov, 2007 http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/stratpolprog/ccare/introduction/digital/bldppolicy1102.pdf UNESCO (2003). Guidelines for the Preservation of Digital Heritage . Prepared by the National Library of Australia . Paris : UNESCO. Retrieved 20 November, 2007, from UNESCO website: unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001300/130071e.pdf Read More