Digital Preservation MetaArchive Cooperative, Digital Preservation Policy Planning Workshop

 Digital Preservation Policy Building  Cultural memory organizations have begun the process of engaging digital preservation ▪ Performing digitization ▪ Building digital collections ▪ Developing preservation strategies  Digital Preservation Policies have often lagged behind digital preservation activities

 Session 1: Digital Preservation Trends  Session 2: Policy & Planning Overview  Resource: Policy Template  Resource: Digital Assets Survey  Session 3: Policy Development

 Policy building for digital preservation is all about Politics and Values:  Who has the authority to start a preservation policy development initiative?  When is the right time to broach the subject?  When should administration be involved?  What are the institutional values that will determine success?  How will you make the case?

Digital Preservation MetaArchive Cooperative, Digital Preservation Policy Planning Workshop

Session 1

 What is Digital Preservation?  Trends in Digital Preservation The Goal: To understand the coalescing landscape of digital preservation requirements and consider the potential investments needed for developing a policy-driven approach to digital preservation.

 “The series of managed activities necessary to ensure continued access to digital materials for as long as necessary.” - Definition from Digital Preservation Coalition

 Centralized & Distributed Preservation  Full & Bit-level Preservation  Preservation Metadata  Open Source Solutions  Focus on economies of scale and benefits  Roles & Responsibilities  Sustainability  Standards and Auditing Metrics  National Mandates  Avoiding silos & pursuing interoperability

 Centralized preservation:  Preservation activities managed by a single institution  Examples: ▪ Library of Congress - Chronicling America ▪ OCLC Digital Archive ▪ DAITSS  Distributed preservation:  Preservation activities managed by multiple institutions replicating and/or geographically locating collections  Examples: ▪ LOCKSS ▪ MetaArchive Cooperative ▪ Chronopolis

 Many archives doing a bit of both  Somewhat of a false dichotomy  Full Preservation  Focuses heavily on format migration and normalization (may still preserve the original) ▪ Highly concerned with monitoring and intervening against format obsolescence up-front  Bit-level Preservation  Focuses primarily on preserving the original bits ▪ Avoids migration, normalization, and monitoring up-front and cites long-lived support or convertability of the majority of formats

 PREMIS  Administrative metadata  Technical metadata  Structural metadata  Provenance metadata  Metadata standards are always under development – mark the moment to learn and continue to watch the horizon

 Open source is a well recognized best practice at this point – real question is: How open?  Why Open source?  Avoiding proprietary solutions can guard against dependencies and sudden loss  Open source formats and technologies maximize communities of support and ensure flexibility and long-lived solutions  Open source approaches dramatically reduce technology costs and can lead to building of expertise

 Digital preservation needs are great at most institutions and digital preservation can be costly  You don’t have (shouldn’t try) to save everything!  Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access  Economies of scale can reduce staff costs  Focus on communicating the benefits to the institution aids in selection and prioritization ▪ Prioritization crucial for offsetting costs ▪ Define the institutional value of your assets

 Partnering with other institutions to preserve content is becoming more popular  Sharing resources and expertise reduces costs  Maintains control over institutional assets rather than handing over responsibility to third parties  Consumers also becoming Producers and Preservers of digital assets  Modularizing the chain of preservation activities (ingest, storage, dissemination)  Microservices and interoperability

 Many grant-funded projects are short-lived or narrowly focused  Institutions have been pressured to just enter the game and hope for the best  Diverse revenue streams becoming essential  NDIIPP transitions to NDSA  Emphasis on collaboration  Promoting self-sustaining cost models

 Trustworthy digital repositories!  Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS)  Trusted Repositories Audit & Certification (TRAC) – 2007  Metrics for Digital Repository Audit & Certification – awaiting ISO standardization

 NIH Public Access Policy (2008) mandates access via PubMed Central  NSF will soon require submission of data management plans  Ensuring long-term accessibility and sharing of data and digital assets to improve research  There is no access without preservation  A massive undertaking requiring top-down institution-wide policies

 Information, data, and research silos result from institutional management structures  Result is a multiplicity of practices and technologies that prevent sharing and re-use  An acknowledged problem  We’re just getting started on solutions  Institution-wide policies have potential to help catalyze institutional change and break down silos

Digital Preservation MetaArchive Cooperative, Digital Preservation Policy Planning Workshop

Session 2

 What is a Digital Preservation Policy?  Policy Building Process  Walkthrough the Policy Template  Preservation Preparedness Activities  Examples (interspersed)

 “Digital preservation policies document an organization’s commitment to preserve digital content for future use; specify file formats to be preserved and the level of preservation to be provided; and ensure compliance with standards and best practices for responsible stewardship of digital information.”  From Long Definition of Digital Preservation, prepared by the ALCTS Preservation and Reformatting Section, Working Group on Defining Digital Preservation, accessed at /defdigpres0408.cfm. /defdigpres0408.cfm

 Build a diverse team of stakeholders  Identify leading trends & best practices  Review necessary policy elements  Evaluate preservation preparedness  Form draft policy statements  Seek approval through proper channels

 Addressing issues of Scope and Selection Criteria can help to clarify policies on: StrategiesEconomics & Sustainability Operating PrinciplesChallenges Roles & ResponsibilitiesOutreach & Education Metadata Permissions & Access Distributed Responsibilities

 This section summarizes the resource groups (e.g., units, departments, or external parties) for which the institution takes responsibility and prioritizes these according to institutional importance.

 Who are the key parties you might need to coordinate with to identify assets and discover preservation needs for each of the primary resource groups that might exist across your institution?

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 This section outlines the way decisions are made regarding what will be preserved.

 Once you have grasped the range of digital assets and their preservation needs you need to apply a set of reasonable criteria for how they should be prioritized for selection.  A good opportunity to begin thinking about available resources and sustainable strategies and how these relate to priorities

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 Selection Activity  Using a scenario of a particular institution and its digital assets (as provided by the presenters), prioritize the various collections of digital assets for preservation.  Digital Assets survey

 Defining digital assets at your institution  Digitized (e.g., scanned newspapers)  Born-digital (e.g., websites)  Electronic records (e.g., spreadsheets, databases, s)  Digital Research Data (e.g., raw sensor data)  Where do your digital assets reside?  Both locally and off-site?  Who are the major producers and consumers?  Researchers? Scholars? External parties?  Can they be deposited for preservation?  To what extent?

 This section summarizes the lifecycle management practices of the institution. Broad categories might include content creation, content integrity, and content maintenance.

 Perform a technical assessment of your institution’s existing approaches and capacity for creating, and maintaining digital assets.  Factor in organizational structure, staffing and skill sets.  Address issues of quality control through preservation planning & risk assessment

NEDCC - Readiness Assessment CRL – Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification (TRAC) Digital Repository Audit Method Based on Risk Assessment (DRAMBORA) Data Seal of Approval (DSA) Planet Preservation Planning Tool – (Plato) OAIS

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 This section provides overview of methodologies and philosophies undergirding preservation activity (e.g., OAIS, TRAC, etc).

 Communicate position toward trustworthy preservation by identifying steps taken to ensure use of standards ▪ OAIS ▪ Digital Preservation Readiness Assessment ▪ Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification (TRAC) ▪ DRAMBORA ▪ Data Seal of Approval

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 This section details who is involved and at what level they are involved. Who is charged with preservation responsibility?

 Preservation responsibility will undoubtedly be a joint endeavor (particularly between your institution, parent institution or departmental IT, and other external parties) and policy should reflect solidified agreements between all parties charged with responsibility.

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 Roles & Responsibilities  Using the DCC life cycle model, think about which parties both within and outside of your institution would be involved in the various aspects of the life cycle. Assign each stage of the life cycle to parties who will be responsible for it.

 This section describes policy/policies for ascribing metadata to preservation objects. May include schema references or documentation bodies (e.g., LC, DLF, NARA).

 Metadata is increasingly becoming central to trustworthy preservation, and policy statements should articulate your institution’s position on capturing some level of preservation metadata, and the role it will play in managing that metadata.

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 This section documents policies around permissions and access of preserved content.

 Establishing the options for access and use of your institutions’ digital assets will go a long way toward both defining what sorts of management and dissemination workflows might need to be developed, as well as how to communicate the terms of such access and use.

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 This section contains information about what the institution’s relationship is to other institutions, and whether it may partner with other institutions to preserve its own collections or the collections of other institutions and under what circumstances.

 Rights & Agreements  Navigating the rights issues can go a long way toward articulating the terms under which partnerships can be pursued to further preservation development.

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 This section documents expected costs and who shoulders the responsibility for those costs.

 Financial Sustainability:  Sustainable Management & Financial Plans  Multi-Year Budget ▪ Factoring in financial cycles  Review Schedules (annual)  Seek diverse revenue streams to support preservation activities

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 This section acknowledges the challenges the institution/field faces in preserving digital collections.

 Remember Trends in Digital Preservation  Perform Risk Assessment  Committing to analyze and report on risk, benefit, investment and expenditures  Identifying the real and potential threats to the digital preservation program, the digital collections, producers and consumers  Should include an inventory of file formats, technology infrastructure, legal mandates, staffing, etc.

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 This section gives an overview of any outreach and education activities undertaken by the institution.

 Champion your policies  Share your development  Develop workshops  Join coalitions and working groups  Know your sphere of influence  Be open to learning and evolving!

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 Policy Statement  Summary Statement

 This is a simple statement that relates digital preservation to the institution’s mission and the communities it serves.

 Review your institution’s broader mission statements  Consider other legal, ethical, and policy mandates  Articulate the needs and the opportunities related to your institution’s resource groups

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 This is a set of simple paragraphs that summarize the overall intent of the institution.

 Why does your institution preserve content (e.g., institutional, legal, consortial obligations)?  Who wrote this policy?  How often is this policy re-evaluated and by whom?

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 This section provides the date of last revision and contact information for the authors

 This section lists other institutional documentation that has a relationship to digital preservation and/or this policy itself. Examples might include such documentation as Disaster Plan, Records Management Policy, and Collections Development Policy.

 This section would clarify terms used throughout the document.

Digital Preservation MetaArchive Cooperative, Digital Preservation Policy Planning Workshop

Session 3 MetaArchive Cooperative, Digital Preservation Policy Planning Workshop

The Goals: To discuss some of the major challenges that often prevent us from forming policies (and how to overcome them!), and to provide a clear starting point and game plan for developing and implementing policies.

 Who has the authority to start a preservation policy development initiative?  When is the right time to broach the subject?  When should administration be involved?  What are the institutional values that will determine success?  How will you promote digital preservation to your stakeholders & decision-makers?

 Elevator Speech for Policy Development  Consider the chain of command for establishing policy at your institution. Identify the individual(s) who will need to approve moving forward with establishing the policy. In no more than 2 paragraphs, write a convincing argument for why a digital preservation policy is needed at your institution. Refer to the mission of your institution and/or its strategic areas of emphasis.

 Determine if you can lead the charge  Approach administration for blessings  Form a committee  Bring in external voices  WORK!  Carry your work back to your community  Integrate the community’s suggestions  Take the final draft to your administration

 Use policy creation as a moment for cross- team and inner-team discussion about digital preservation responsibilities  Team-building potential

 Use the policy meetings as a planning tool. Where does your institution aspire to be in a year? In five years?  Remember Session 2

 As you write your policy, write in expectations for how the policy will mature and how you will keep it alive  When does it expire?  Who is responsible for updating it?  What happens if that person/people move away?  What is the next step?

 Share your newfound knowledge—and newly created policy—with others in the field  Presentations  Prominent link  “How to” documentation

 Share the experience of this workshop and create a buzz  Brown bag lunch presentation  Staff development program  Meet with department heads  Schedule a local training session  Identify helpful/interested people

 Put together a group of people  The importance of buy in  Know who is a friend and who will be a challenge  Make it personal; what are the consequences  Determine responsibilities  Develop policies and procedures  Survey collections and assess risk

 For long-term sustainability you need support from top administrators  Schedule a meeting and make a presentation  Hook into your institution’s mission statement  Do your homework & know your figures  Distribute a draft proposal in advance Be passionate, be eloquent, and be inclusive