1. Building a national trusted digital repository
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Building a national trusted digital repository
IASSIT 2014| JUNE| TORONTO, CANADA
Dr Aileen O’Carroll
Policy Manager
Digital Repository of Ireland
Royal Irish Academy
Dr Sharon Webb
Requirements Analyst
Digital Repository of Ireland
Royal Irish Academy
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2. What is the Digital Repository of Ireland?
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What is the Digital Repository of Ireland?
DRI is an interactive, national trusted digital repository for contemporary and historical, social and cultural data held by Irish institutions
A key task is to link together and preserve the rich data held by Irish institutions, provide a central internet access point and interactive multimedia tools. Enabling access and reuse to research data is a central challenge.
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DRI Presentation

3. Vision
DRI links and preserves the rich data held by Irish institutions, providing a central internet access point, and multimedia tools
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DRI Presentation

4. Funding/Consortium Irish government funded (HEA)
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Funding/Consortium
Irish government funded (HEA)
Royal Irish Academy (lead), National University of Ireland Maynooth, National University of Ireland Galway, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin Institute of Technology, National College of Art and Design
Partners: academic, cultural, social, government
Sep 2011 – Sep Initial grant €5.2M
Funding currently extended out to 2019
It is a four-year exchequer funded project, comprising six Irish academic partners, and is supported by the National Library of Ireland, the National Archives of Ireland (NAI) and the Irish national broadcaster RTÉ.
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5. Services Preservation (TDR, Data Seal of Approval) Access (use)
Sharing, linking, user tools (reuse)
 Cultural & Social heritage
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6. Current Status (June 2014)
Prototype of repository, single and bulk ingest
Hardware on site; private cloud created
Initial design of user interface (tools will be bilingual)
Open Access to Metadata (at a minimum)
Metadata formats: Dublin Core, MODS, EAD, MARCXML, METS (indexed, searchable, faceted)
DRI to mint DOIs (PID)
International Report (follows National one)
File formats – text and image
In progress: ingestion guidelines on preparing metadata, audio and video formats, IP/copyright/deposit licenses
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7. Building the Repository through
community engagement
National Engagement
International Engagement
Open Source Software
Partnerships & Training
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8. National Engagement (cont.)
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National Engagement (cont.)
Qualitative Interviews with content holders 
Stakeholder Advisory Committee
National Steering Committee on Open Access
Demonstrator Projects
Parallel Projects
This paper will examine the contributions of the interview process to policy development and requirements gathering with a particular focus on access and reuse.
the process of qualitative interviews conducted by DRI allowed us to develop a complex understanding of the barriers which might limit the ability of data to be shared. An unexpected outcome of this process was it facilitated community engagement. This assisted in developing the relations of trust which are so key to overcoming barriers to access and data sharing.
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9. Consultation: Interviews with content holders
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Consultation: Interviews with content holders
Qualitative interviews
40 content-holding institutions - current approaches to digital data
builds engagement, community, trust
Launch of National Report in Oct 2012: Digital Archiving in Ireland: National Survey of the Humanities and Social Sciences
- Chituc (2012) argues that “research on requirements engineering in the context of LTDP is scarce.
- DRI emphasised the need to carry out a thorough evaluation of the needs and requirements of its target audience.
underpin the development of this national infrastructure by understanding the activities, task, goals and behaviours of its users rather than building a solution to an unspecified and unknown problem.
the used of qualitative interviews
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10. @aaocarroll
Users
firstly users are content holders (cultural institutions, social science archives and libraries) who may either be sharing their digital content directly with DRI or will be sharing their metadata.
Consumers: A second set of users are the researchers and general public who will be making use of the digital content
The boundaries between the two are not clear cut
as in some cases, the content holders are also researchers who both archive and use content
(for example, the Irish Qualitative Data Archive, the All Ireland Research Observatory, and An Foras Feasa).
B) the project design includes a number of researcher-led demonstrator projects who are tasked to test the repository and to illustrate the power of the archive.
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11. Interviewees Irish Traditional Music Archive
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Interviewees
Irish Traditional Music Archive
National Archives of Ireland
Nat’l Centre for Tech. in Education
National Folklore Collection
National Irish Visual Arts Library
National Gallery of Ireland
National Library of Ireland
National Museum of Ireland
NUI Galway
NUI Maynooth
Oral History Network of Ireland
Raidió na Gaeltachta
Royal Irish Academy
RTÉ
Trinity College Dublin
University College Cork
University College Dublin
University of Limerick
An Foras Feasa
Clare County Library
Crawford Gallery
Digital Enterprise Research Institute
Digital Humanities Observatory
Discovery Programme
Dublin City Archives
Dublin City University
Economic and Social Affairs Institute
Health Research Board
Hunt Museum, Limerick
Irish Architectural Archive
Irish Film Institute
Irish Manuscript Commission
Irish Museum of Modern Art
Irish Qualitative Data Archive
The first round of interviews, which this paper is based on, interviewed representatives, the content holders, and the demonstrator projects.
Within the interview, the interviewees were asked to describe their needs as both content-holders, and as end-users and
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12. Requirements Engineering – optional slide
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Requirements Engineering – optional slide
Sharon – do you want to include a slide on Requirements engineering here?
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13.  Policy Development Guidelines & National Policy Current Practices
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Policy Development
Current Practices
Best Practices 
Guidelines & National Policy
policy development as a central function of TDRs.
Policy Development Cycle
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14. Interview Process 1. Ethical approval
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Interview Process
1. Ethical approval
2. Consent for archiving (Test data!)
3. Semi-structured
4. Topic Guide
Pre-ingest
Ingest
Preservation
Dissemination
Future developments
The interviews were semi-structured.
Our aim was to establish how users/stakeholders currently support their digital resources/objects and how they develop and maintain their data archives/repositories. The key approach is to use open ended questions (e.g. can you tell me about, can you describe, etc), following the flow of the interviewee, and only directing, if the issues that need to be discussed do not emerge naturally in course of the conversation.
A topic guide (see appendix) was prepared which addressed the resource/archive in terms of its current data life-cycle.
Pre-ingest Stage: The activities surrounding the data before it is prepared for archiving.
Ingest Stage: Preparation and deposit of data into archive.
Preservation Stage: Fulfilling archives responsibility to preserve data.
Dissemination Stage: Fulfilling an archives responsibility to enable reuse of data.
Future development within a federated repository.
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15. Formats Issues addressed include software or computer systems in use,
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Formats
Issues addressed include
software or computer systems in use,
whether it was static or living archive,
whether there was multilingual data,
metadata and database formats,
future proofing,
data security user tools.
Policy issues relating to
ownership,
copyright,
IP issues
data sensitivity
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16. @aaocarroll
Metadata
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17. Thesauri/Vocab/Ontologies
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Thesauri/Vocab/Ontologies
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18. Digital Asset Management Systems
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Digital Asset Management Systems
38% of institutions interviewed had own repositories
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19. Database / Where do you keep records?
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Database / Where do you keep records?
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20. Challenges to Policy – Open Access
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Challenges to Policy – Open Access
Copyright (Humanities and cultural heritage)
Shifting Legal Frameworks
Copyright restrictions
Orphan works
Data protection (Social sciences)
Anonymity
Embargos
Access restrictions
Data destruction
Types of copyright restrictions
copyright legalisation which placed access restrictions on books, journals and collections they held (eg libraries).
Some institutions exercised copyright to generate revenue.
Others exercised their copyright in order to limit unwanted re-use of their data.
For example, one institution cited the re-use of a photograph in their collection by a commercial entity, in a way that exposed the individuals in the photograph to ridicule
This type of mis-use could be prevented by denying the right to re-use. However, this also required that the institution was both aware of the re-use and in a position to defend its copyright.
Tensions
a mark interest in increasing access to digital data
1. Humanities, “a clear sense that once an object was released in digital form, it would then be extremely difficult, if not impossible to police how that object might be used.”
2. social sciences, where data is collected on the lives of contemporary individuals, a balance needs to be maintained between the rights of the public to access publicly funded data and the rights of research participants to have their confidentiality protected.
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21. DRI Policy Responses - Access
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DRI Policy Responses - Access
National Principles for Open Access Policy Statement (
Open metadata
Identified metadata standards for ingest into DRI
Interoperability with Europeana
“RI has contributed to the publication of a 'National Principles for Open Access Policy Statement" which in terms of research data states
Research data should be deposited whenever this is feasible, and linked to associated publications where this is appropriate.
* European and national data protection rules must be taken into account in relation to research data, as well as concerns regarding trade secrets, confidentiality or national security.
At a minimum, metadata describing research data and its location and access rights should be deposited.”
Our decision to support a range of requirements is drawn from a recognition, drawn from the interview process, that the various domains served by the DRI have differing experiences in terms of metadata use. Depositors will be advised to use the metadata standard appropriate to their discipline. Our choice of standards reflects common practice in Ireland and internationally.
Dublin Core, Modified Dublin Core, MARCXML, EAD, MODS and METS.
It also became evident that many users are already involved with Europeana, therefore an additional policy which emerged from the interview process is that interoperability with Europeana and EDM will be supported by DRI.
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22. Conclusion User Engagement Old issues New issues, new TDRs? Training
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Conclusion
Old issues
New issues, new TDRs?
User Engagement
Training
Skills sharing
National Policy development
Old issues (copyright, data protection)
New Issues
New issues were identified that are not seen traditionally as within the remit of a TDR ; these tended to be at the level of end-user needs rather than preservation needs. (eg smart phone/tablet use, end-user tools (visualisations, time/maps, user curated collections, crowdsourcing etc).
User-buy in
a strong finding from the community - decreasing resources and financial pressures & need for national policy
An “if you built it, they will come” approach is not feasible.
- Socio-technical system which in which the additional roles of training, skill sharing, and national policy development are also central to it’s mission.
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23. Training Workshops/Seminars:
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Training
Workshops/Seminars:
Linked Data, Data Modelling, Visualisation (and all about DH)
‘Translation’ workshops by request – e.g. archivists, librarians
Digital Preservation in a Day
Open Access
Public Events (e.g. Researchers’ Night Curate-a-thon)
Partnerships with:
Digital Preservation Coalition (trust, digital pres. for beginners)
CENDARI (European collaborative research infrastructure)
Central Statistics Office - curation roadshow (4th quarter 2013)
INSPIRING IRELAND
2014: Documentation on ingestion guidelines, hands-on workshops
* Digital archiving was a relatively new field to many,
the interview allowed for mutual learning and fulfilled an unexpected community engagement function.
The ‘bottom up’ approach ensures that DRI will develop in response to stakeholder needs.
Policy development continues as an iterative process as both a National Stakeholder Advisory Group and and International Stakeholder Advisory Group have been established.
Additional stakeholders continue to be interviewed on a rolling basis (QUB, Irish Military Archives)
Building an infrastructure should not be considered a series of linear steps but rather a process of discussion and engagement.
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24. Contact us! @dri_ireland @aaocarroll Aileen.ocarroll@nuim.ie
Preview DRI :
Inspiring Ireland:
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