Digital preservation – State of the game on the library lawns Digital Futures International Forum National Archives of Australia, 19 September 2007 Colin Webb Director, Web Archiving & Digital Preservation National Library of Australia

What Im going to cover The story behind the title Some critical context What I see as the state of play in the library sector

A story On the lawns v. in the vault Context is king!

Libraries? Local, organisational, special, national, state/provincial, school, university, … Kinds of information? Published, unpublished, grey literature, information brokerage

Access Access Access!!!

Focus on publications By no means all that libraries hold: –Significant unpublished digital collections, significant preservation challenges BUT for today, publicly available digital materials A publication is information, regardless of its format or method of delivery, that is made available to the general public, or to an identified public, either free of charge or for a fee. Definition from: PANDORA Selection Guidelines

Game of threes Kinds of digital materials: Online E-journals Physical format digital publications Issues impacting on preservation: Collecting Access Preservation Preservation issue clusters: Data management Maintaining accessibility & meaning Responsibility, sustainability, resources

Collecting to preserve (Strengths and weaknesses of libraries re digital preservation) Must collect in order to preserve No obligation on creators to look after, or to create in a way that enables preservation No obligation on creators to deposit (at Cth level) World Wild Web – survival unchanged almost impossible Collecting a preservation prerequisite and imperative – getting material into a safe(ish) place

Collecting to preserve Legitimate priority for preservation Achievements – national libraries, IA, IIPC International Internet Preservation Consortium –26 members, mostly national libraries

Collecting becomes preservation? Resource preoccupations –Funding allocations –Brain power and energy to address collecting obstacles IIPC preoccupations – collecting tools Database collecting - Xinq

Collecting to preservation NLA Review Balancing research quality collections against comprehensiveness? Achievements over 12 years Dilemmas – what and how to collect for preservation –Resources driven –Legal deposit –Changing nature of online materials

Access and preservation (Strengths and weaknesses of libraries re digital preservation) Access imperative – critical driver for libraries – federated resource discovery, federated getting, PIs Preservation = access Access as test of preservation Access in short-term, access in the future

Access and preservation Case study – physical format digital publications Less concern over collecting Preservation attention linked to access Concern over TPMs Shifting to concerns over safety of the current safe place Workflow development

Preservation as preservation (Strengths and weaknesses of libraries re digital preservation) Collecting & access – both part of, and context for, digital preservation Data management Obsolescence management Responsibility, sustainability, resources

Preservation as preservation Case study of surprising success – –e-journals: KB and publishers –Data management –Emulation –Collecting model (deposit) –Access model –Responsibility, sustainability?

Preservation driven by library needs Case study – online materials - –IIPC Preservation Working Group Case study – tools development – –Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (APSR) METS profile AONS (Automatic Obsolescence Notification)

Where we are now on the library lawns … Tools, workflows, end to end hypothesis Risk assessment Detailed pres planning Making it all work? Making it work for us as individual libraries? Making it work for communities of libraries? Making it work for communities?

Where we are now on the library lawns … Collaboration – recognising our differences, learning from each other, plugging-in tools to business-appropriate workflows

Where we are now on the library lawns … Sustainability? –dependencies of vision, skills, management, funding, suitable legislative support? –Or preservation wont happen, regardless of the collaboration, workflows, tools, planning

If we fail to preserve … The vaults will be empty … the lawns only occupied by fools trying to imagine the knowledge of the past …

Thank you