1. Digital Curation Activities at the University of Glasgow
Andrew McHugh
HATII, DCC and DPE
Combined Support Community Lunchtime Meeting – 16th May 2007

2. The Problem Digital assets exhibit fragility Digital assets have value
The value of digital assets is proportional to their integrity, authenticity and usability

3. The Movie Industry
‘As far as movies are concerned, digital, like diamonds, was supposed to be forever.’ [Variety magazine]
There’s no generally accepted way to store digital movies for more than a few months
Insider accounts describe corruption or missing frames on 40% of digital movies within 9 months of creation!
Bit-torrent? – see LOCKSS for a conceptually similar model

4. Consumer Concerns will follow
Digital assets represent a vast proportion of the things that we regard as valuable
Music
Photographs
Books
Can we guarantee their accessibility?
Can we guarantee their integrity?

5. The Problem for Academia
Research
Scientific Data sets
E-Theses, ePrints
Teaching
moodle
Administrative Information
ICT ubiquitous in administration
Freedom of Information Legislation

6. Digital Curation
Digital curation is maintaining and adding value to a trusted body of digital information for current and future use; specifically, we mean the active management and appraisal of data over the life-cycle of scholarly and scientific materials.
Preserving content + adding value = curation

7. Two sides of preservation
Bit preservation: Maintaining the integrity of the bit-streams that represent the files within our stewardship (comparatively trivial problem)
Information preservation: Maintaining understandability, whatever that may mean (much more difficult)
Can you render files?
Can you understand semantics of file?

8. Bit preservation activities
Correspond to typical information security best practice
Appropriate technological and physical security
Redundancy
Backups
Administrative, logical and physical controls
ISO 17799; 27001

9. Information preservation
Includes issues like:
Metadata
Preservation strategies (emulation, migration, refreshment, digital archaeology, analogisation)
Archival practice & preservation lifecycle
Representation information
Open source and open standards
Digital preservation repositories

10. Numerous Related Issues
Policy
Organisational Commitment
Legal issues
Technology
DRM

11. Projects at Glasgow
HATII hosts many of the leading projects in this area, in collaboration across the UK and Europe
Also see
eSpida
DAEDALUS

12. Digital Curation Centre
Research, Development and Services
Information Provenance
Database Annotation and Citation
Representation Information Management
Semantic Metadata Extraction
Legal Issues
Repository Audit and Certification
Training

13. DigitalPreservationEurope
Coordinating action across Europe
Repository activities
Repository audit and certification
Training Activities
Forthcoming Digital Preservation Challenge
DPEX – Digital Preservation Exchange Programme

14. Digital Repository Audit Method Based on Risk Assessment
Repository self validation
Prepares repository for external audit
Develop risk management approach to curation
Documentation exercise

15. PLANETS Characterisation Preservation Planning Preservation Action
Dissemination and Takeup
Testbed Services

16. Curation/Preservation Workflow
Creators
Datasets
Documents
Digitisation Projects
Curators/Records Managers/Archivists
Those responsible for maintenance and management
Reusers
Those seeking to subsequently exploit value
Where does the onus lie?

17. Points for Discussion
To what extent is digital preservation at the forefront of University IT policy?
Does the (often intangible) value of digital assets appear on the balance sheet?
Is it viable to change habits of creators to facilitate information longevity?
Is this a problem that we can solve now?
Whose responsibility is it?

18. Projects at HATII Digital Curation Centre DigitalPreservationEurope
DigitalPreservationEurope
PLANETS
CASPAR
Arts and Humanities Data Service
DELOS Digital Preservation Cluster