Digital preservation – State of the game on the library lawns

Digital Futures International ForumNational Archives of Australia, 19 September 2007

Colin WebbDirector, Web Archiving& Digital Preservation

National Library of Australiacwebb@nla.gov.au

What I’m 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• “Published”, “unpublished”, “grey literature”, information brokerage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– Significant unpublished digital collections, significant preservation challenges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 Guidelineshttp://pandora.nla.gov.au/selectionguidelines.html#pubdefinition

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 C’th 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, PI’s

• 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 TPM’s

• 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 won’t 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