New Opportunities Fund Preservation Workshop March 15th 2002 Maggie Jones Cedars Project Manager

Strategic Overview w Increasing quantity of digital information being produced w Increasing investment in digital technology for scholarship and research w Increasing dependence on digital technology

Strategic Overview, continued w Challenges of maintaining digital materials w Strategic Developments in digital preservation since 1995 w Focus on UK - though increasing collaboration at global level w Implications for creators of digital content

Increase in Quantity of Digital Material w “ In 2000 the www consisted of about 21 terabytes of static HTML pages, and is growing at a rate of 100% per year. Many web pages are generated on the fly from data in databases, so the total size of the “deep web” is considerably larger.” Source: How Much Information? October 2000

Increasing Investment in Digital Technology w Individual institutional level w £50m for NOF-Digitise Programme for creation of high quality content w Government agenda

Increasing Dependence on Digital Technology w Considerable advantages of digital access enhanced functionality convenience of access w Cultural shift in programmes such as eLib, moves to OAI archives etc. w Changing expectations of library clientele

Categories of Digital Documents w Conversion of non-digital to digital (digitisation, e.g. BL’s Treasures) w digital documents created during day-to-day business of an institution ( digital records) w resources created digitally (‘born digital’) However they come into being, they need to be managed from the earliest possible stage

Digitisation v Digital Preservation w Digitisation = the process of creating digital files by scanning or otherwise converting non-digital materials usually done for the purpose of enhanced access may be used as a preservation tool to protect the non-digital originals

Digital Preservation w Actions necessary to maintain access to digital materials beyond the limits of media failure or technological change w Digital documents needing to be preserved might include results of digitisation projects; or digital records created by an institution; or ‘born digital’ documents

Digital Preservation Challenges w Technical fragility of the media technological obsolescence need to be able to overcome dependence on hardware and software environment it was created in speed of technological change

Digital Preservation Challenges, continued w Roles and responsibilities are not yet well- established Trend towards licensing access rather than “owning” a document Need to actively manage document from creation (lifecycle management) ephemeral nature of many documents, particularly project-based

Digital Preservation as a Strategic Priority w 1995 Report of RLG/CPA Task Force on Digital Archiving ‘Warwick 1’ Workshop on Long-Term Preservation of Electronic Materials Establishment of Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS) UK Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib)

Putting Digital Preservation on the Agenda w ‘Warwick 1’ led to: commissioning of seven studies into digital preservation w AHDS activities commitment to good practice in creation and management of digital resources w eLib Phase 3 included digital preservation as strategic priority

The Cedars Project w “Having caused some of the increasing move of scholarly resources into the digital domain, we felt it was irresponsible to continue to ignore or to sideline preservation issues” Chris Rusbridge. ‘Towards the Digital Library’. D-Lib Magazine July/August w The Cedars (CURL Exemplars in Digital Archives) Project,

Further Developments w ‘Warwick 2’ held in March 1999 Concluded that: Need to have better co-ordination (post of JISC Digital Preservation Focus established June 2000) Need more scope for collaboration (Digital Preservation Coalition established)

Digital Preservation Coalition w Aim is to develop a UK digital preservation agenda within an international context sharing learning and practice; advocacy and co- ordination w 19 members (as of March 2002) w Officially launched on 27th February 2002 good press coverage

Other Developments w Attributes of Trusted Digital Repositories w EU meeting on Digital Preservation, March 2002 w UNESCO resolution on digital preservation w The Research Grid initial funding of £120m for e-science

Other Developments, continued w National deposit libraries are building infrastructure to manage digital collections BL building Digital Library Store KB building Deposit System for Electronic publications (DSEP) w Further research on technical preservation strategies being undertaken by the CAMiLEON project

Lifecycle Management w ‘…responsibility for archiving rests initially with the creator or owner of the information…’ RLG/CPA TaskForce on Digital Archiving

Lifecycle Management, continued w Involvement of creators of digital content in digital preservation is key difference in collection management between digital and non-digital w Need to manage from creation because: the speed and inevitability of change cost-effectiveness - avoids the need for costly retrospective rescues

NOF-Digitise w Requires all grant holders to adhere to technical standards w Recognition of importance of good practice from creation

Summary w Digital Technology has brought many opportunities and some challenges w Much work has been done in addressing those challenges since the Report of the RLG/CPA Taskforce in 1995 w Much still to be done but the point of no return has now been reached