Museum Studies, 4/1/04 Tough Challenges in Preserving Electronic Works: Moving Images, Websites, and...

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Museum Studies, 4/1/04 Tough Challenges in Preserving Electronic Works: Moving Images, Websites, and Electronic Art Howard Besser NYU Moving Image Archiving & Preservation Program http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/~howard http://www.nyu.edu/tisch/preservation/

Transcript of Museum Studies, 4/1/04 Tough Challenges in Preserving Electronic Works: Moving Images, Websites, and...

Museum Studies, 4/1/04

Tough Challenges in Preserving Electronic Works:Moving Images, Websites, and Electronic Art

Howard BesserNYU Moving Image Archiving & Preservation Program

http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/~howard

http://www.nyu.edu/tisch/preservation/

Museum Studies, 4/1/04

Paradigms Shifts needed

Old New

Physical preservation

atmospheric cntrl ongoing mgmt

What to save? artifact idea + ancillary material & documentation

Cataloging Individual work in hand

FRBR

Later access Artifact & documentation

Restaging, ancillary material & documentation

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Tough Challenges in Preserving Electronic Works:

Moving Images, Websites, and Electronic Art-• The problems with any type of moving image

material• How are new works even more problematic?• Issues with Digital Preservation• Issues with New Works• Technical & Conceptual Approaches to solutions• Efforts to watch (projects, standards)• Paradigm shifts needed• Moving Image Preservation Education

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Moving Images are critical to understanding our cultural heritage

• Both fiction & documentaries shape any time period’s views of the past (Moses & 10 Commandments; Cleopatra; Caesar’s Rome; 1940s urban US; Hitler, Holocaust, WWII; Vietnam War, …)

• We are shaped by the cultural icons of our childhood (Leave it to Beaver, Lassie, James Bond, police shows, Mickey Mouse, Road Runner, …)

• We are also shaped by the advertisements, industrial, and educational films of our childhood (Maytag repairman, How to be a good homemaker, …)

• To understand our time period, people in the future will need to have access to the cultural artifacts of our time (imagine trying to understand 1950s and 1960s gender dynamics without pop cultural views of the family)

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What’s challenging about Moving Image Collections?

• You can’t browse a collection• Many different purposes (documenting events,

telling stories)• “Published” works have variant forms; upcoming

concentration on repurposing• Many physical formats (film gauges, video sizes

and encoding, digital encoding and compressions)-

• No format even approaches the stability of non-acidic paper-

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Moving Images are highly unstable, and an enormous # have already disappeared

• 50% of all titles produced before 1950 have vanished (approximate number as of late 1970s)

• This reflects full-length features; survival rates are much lower for other types (studio newsreels, shorts, docs, independent, …), and these “orphans” are particularly in peril

• Fewer than 20% of features from 1920s survive in complete form; survival rates of 1910s is <10% (& none of these are negatives)

-Film Preservation 1993: A Study of the Current State of American Film Preservation, Vol 1: Report, June 1993, Report of the Librarian of

Congress (http://www.loc.gov/film/study.html)

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Some reasons why Moving Images are disappearing

• Most pre-sound films weren’t saved at all• Nitrates hazard• Eastmancolor fading• Video--changing formats, magnetic

particles not adhering to backing, little recognition of importance of saving

• Who should be responsible for saving works without lucrative financial value

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Hampton Collection (1)

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Hampton Collection (2)

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Hampton Collection (3)

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Hampton Collection (negatives)

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Hampton Collection (interviews)

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Hampton Collection (exhibits)

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Hampton Collection (atmosphere cntrl)

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File Format Issues-

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Various Formats Intermixed (Hampton)

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Old Film Formats

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We’re always reformatting, and dealing with wide variety of

formats• Nitrate

• Super8

• Cinemascope

• 3-D

• Cartridge

• …

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Conservation & Preservation Operations & Treatments--Analog• Ideal temperature & humidity are slightly lower than for

paper (and differ for film vs. video)• Actual restoration requires historical context research

(separate tracks, missing pieces, variant forms)• Film

– Nitrate stock needs to be kept separate (& eventually reformatted)– Vinegar syndrome is first sign of gas decay

• Video– When adhesive decays, baking tapes can achieve one final pass

over read heads

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Ideal digital moving image file format

(Jerome McDonough)

• Non-proprietary file format• supports 10-bit/pixel• no compression or lossless compression

using non-proprietary CODEC• supports multiple frame rates/frame sizes• supports time code data in file• supports audio (multichannel) and video in

single file

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Limitations of present file formats

• MPEG seems to be only non-proprietary format

• AVI and Quicktime with extensions incorporate most features, but are proprietary

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Many quality questions

• Quality of playback?

• Theater experience?

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How are new works even more problematic?-

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Conventional Works

• Manuscripts, books, paintings, sculpture

• We have a good sense of what the original object is

• Objective is to make object itself endure (temperature/humidity control, chemicals/pigments/fibers/adhesives, …)

• Goal is to keep object as close as possible to original state (though occasionally contraversy arises over whether to let aging show)

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Electronic Media

• Video, audio, digital, new media

• Often difficult to determine what the original object is

• Difficult to make the original object endure (magnetic particle deterioration, warping, etc.)

• Even if we could make the original object endure, we wouldn’t have the infrastructure to view it in the future

• Need to develop a paradigm shift from preserving the original object to preserving info content

• Need to pay more attention to maintaining authenticity and replicating user experience

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Electronic Art in generalis not like canvas paintings

• May include– Moving image materials

– Multimedia

– Interactive programs (including hypertext novels & games)

– Computer generated art

• Most electronic art works share some common characteristics with other “strange” works like– Performance Art

– Conceptual Art

– Site-specific installations

– Experiential Art

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The Short Life of Digital Info: Digital Longevity Problems-

Disappearing InformationThe Viewing ProblemThe Scrambling ProblemThe Inter-relation ProblemThe Custodial ProblemThe Translation Problem

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The Viewing Problem

Digital Info requires a whole infrastructure to view it

Each piece of that infrastructure is changing at an incredibly rapid rate

How can we ever hope to deal with all the permutations and combinations

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The Scrambling Problem

Dangers from:

Compression to ease storage & deliveryContainer Architecture to enhance digital

commerce

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The Inter-relation Problem

-Info is increasingly inter-related to other info

-How do we make our own Info persist when it points to and integrates with Info owned by others?

-What is the boundary of a set of information (or even of a digital object)?

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The Custodial Problem

In the past, much of survival was due to redundancy

How do we decide what to save?Who should save it?

Mellon-funded E-Journal Archives

How should they save it?-

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The Custodial Problem:How to save information?

Methods for later accessRefreshingMigrationEmulation

Issues of authenticity and evidence

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The Translation Problem

Content translated into new delivery devices changes meaning– -A photo vs. a painting– -If Info is produced originally in digital form in

one encoded format, will it be the same when translated into another format?

– Behaviors

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The Translation Problem

Thinking of the Future (1/2)

• Screens will be different resolutions and different aspect ratios

• CRTs won’t exist

• A decade or 2 from now, today’s user interfaces will look like arrow-key navigation looks like today

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The Translation Problem

Thinking of the Future (2/2)

• Today’s streaming media are small windows, slow speeds

• As bandwidth increases, viewers will expect higher quality streams

• Creators may need to consider how they’ll be able to deliver higher-bandwidth streams– Delivery Derivatives vs. Masters encoded w/standards– May also want to re-edit the piece to take advantage of

changes in technology, viewer expectations, society-

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Responding to serious Longevity Problems

Previous formats required little ongoing intervention (remote storage facilities, Iron Mtn); digital formats require intense ongoing management

Need for:Preservation RepositoriesPreservation Metadata

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Issues with new works-

• What is the work?

• Complexity of rich media

• Difficulty of making the work last

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LeWitt: Wall Drawing 340

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Installing LeWitt

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LeWitt Install Directions

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LeWitt: What do we save?

• The installation?

• Documentation of the Installation?

• The directions for the Installation?

• What is the goal of our documentation and preservation?

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ECI - Imagespace (early 80s)

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ECI - Hole in Space (both)

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ECI - 84-locations

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ECI - 84-Community Memory

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ECI - 84-kids

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ECI - 84-MOCA

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ECI - 84-Annotating Video

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Complexity of Rich Media

• Works often have artistic nature (including video games)

• Enormous number of elements can, at times, be very important to preserve (pacing, original artifact, elements used to construct the artifact)

• Too complex to save every one of these aspects for every type of material

• Importance of saving documentation

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Special Characteristics of Electronic Works

• What Really is the Work?

• Disappearing software

• Enormous number of elements can, at times, be very important to preserve (randomness, interactivity, pacing, color, format, original artifact, elements used to construct the artifact)

• Pieces and Boundaries

• Recontextualization (Postmodernism)--which rendition to save?

• Dynamic & Lack of Fixity (evolving works)

• Interactivity

• Historical context

• Difficulty of authentication over time

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Documentation & Preservation: What are we trying to do?

• Show the work the way people saw and interacted with it when it was first created (may be impossible; in the past, the artifact and how one interacted with it didn’t change much, so preservation and documentation were relatively straightforward)

• Show documentation of the work and people interacting with it when it was first created

• Reinstall/Recreate/Reinact the work

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What can we do specific to Electronic Art?

• Works themselves may no longer even exist; in many cases, what we can save amounts to forensic evidence

• Enormous number of elements can, at times, be very important to preserve (pacing, original artifact, elements used to construct the artifact)

• Too complex to save every one of these aspects for every type of material

• Importance of saving pieces, representations, and documentation

• Involve the artists to capture their intentions

• Importance of Standards

• Familiarize ourselves with recent conservation developments (Who Knows?, TechArcheology, Tate, IMAP)

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Technical & Conceptual Approaches to Solutions-

• Save the Hardware & Software

• Emulate

• Migrate

• FRBR

• Artist Intentions

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Save the Hardware & Software-

• A huge undertaking

• Computer Museum

• Broderbund

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Old Video Formats

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Old Digital Formats

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Save the Hardware & Software

• A huge undertaking

• Computer Museum

• Broderbund

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Possible endless need for reformatting implies

• Possible loss with each generation

• Requires managed environment

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Approaches to Solutions-

• Save the Hardware & Software

• Emulate

• Migrate

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Conceptual Approaches to Digital Preservation

• Refreshing always necessary due to volatility of physical strata– Impact on evidential value

• Migration -- advantages & disadvantages• Emulation -- advantages & disadvantages

• And will need a long-term managed environment-

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Migration

• Wordstar to Word 1 to Word 3, …• -Tables and complex features often get

corrupted• -Need to repeat every 4-5 years (maybe

forever)• +We know how to do this ourselves• +If there’s a problem, we can catch it soon

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Emulation

• Keep the Wordstar file format, but write emulators to make it work in newer environments

• +A better chance of carrying over complexity

• +Many more features can survive

• -Problems may not be caught until it’s too late

• -Specialists and a whole infrastructure of emulators required

• -Serious © problems (reverse engineering?)

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Managed Environment

• More than temperature & humidity control

• Periodic monitoring of the works

• Periodic monitoring of the technical environment for viewing the works (software, systems, hardware)

• Trusted repositories-

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Incorporate parts of Functional Requirements for Bibliographic

Records (FRBR)

• work• expression• manifestation• item

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Standards for encodingartists intentions

(group efforts w/i Cult Heritage community)

• Variable Media• More recent SFMOMA/Tate collaborations• IMAP• Artists Interviews Project, Netherlands Institute for

Cultural Heritage 1998-1999, Modern Art: Who Cares (http://www.icn.nl/english/6.4.2.html)

• TechArcheology: A Symposium on Installation Preservation (SFMOMA)

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A few questions our community should address

• Special issues raised by non-library institutions

• Special issues raised by images and rich media

• What is the work (or salient points we need to preserve)?

• Bring the arts communities (artist intent, BAVC) together with the preservation repository communities and the preservation metadata communities

• Specifically get Cult Heritage communities involved with the selected OCLC/RLG recommendations

• Get cult heritage groups started on working to make sure that structure standards incorporate our works

• What organizations will take responsibility to save today’s digital “ephemeral” materials (online ‘zines, arts discussion groups, etc.)?

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Standards, Metadata, & Best Practices to follow-

• Risk Management• Best Practices for Reformatting• Preservation Repositories & Metadata• Other Metadata & Standards

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Risk Management

• We can’t say definitively that we can make every digital work persist

• What we CAN say is that the more a digital work conforms to standards and best practices, the greater the likelihood that we can assure persistance

• Our preservation repositories can even accept deposits of non-conforming works, but the less they conform, the less likely that they’ll be salvageable

• Persistance is most likely for works that share standards, metadata, and best practices

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Reformatting Best Practices (still images)

• Think about users (and potential users), uses, and type of material/collection

• Scan at the highest quality that does not exceed the likely potential users/uses/material

• Do not let today’s delivery limitations influence your scanning file sizes; understand the difference between digital masters and derivative files used for delivery

• Many documents which appear to be bitonal actually are better represented with greyscale scans

• Include color bar and ruler in the scan

• Use objective measurements to determine scanner settings (do NOT attempt to make the image good on your particular monitor or use image processing to color correct)

• Don’t use lossy compression• Store in a common (standardized)

file format• Capture as much metadata as is

reasonably possible (including metadata about the scanning process itself)

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Preservation Repositories:Open Archival Info System Model

Producer

Management

Consumer

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Preservation Repositories:Open Archival Info System Model

High-level reference model describing submission, organization and management, and continuing access

Conceptual framework for different organizations to share discussions with a common language

Producers, consumers, management, actual repository SIP, DIP, AIP AIP consists of data objects plus representation info (Content,

Preservation Description, Packaging, Descriptive) Originally developed for Space Science community

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Preservation Repositories -- AIP Metadata

• Preservation Description Info– reference info– context info– provenance info– fixity info

• Packaging Info• Descriptive Info• Content Info

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Metadata Encoding & Transmission Standards (METS)

• Designed to make viewing works less dependent on proprietary software and particular computing environments

• Upsurge in use for digital reformatting of other types of archival material

• METS extensions for streaming media

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OCLC/RLGDigital Repository Attributes

• Administrative responsibility

• Organizational viability

• Financial sustainability

• Technological suitability

• System security

• Procedural accountability

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OCLC/RLGSelected Recommendations

• Policies, Certification processes, Risk management, Persistent ID, Migration/Emulation experiments

• Stakeholders meet to decide how to describe what is in a dig repository

• Examine special properties of particular classes of digital objects

• Technical standards for exchange and interoperability btwn repositories

• Develop projects and case studies• Copyright issues

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OCLC/RLG Efforts

Working Group I: Preservation Metadata Framework

• …to define the concept of preservation metadata, describe its importance in context of the overall digital preservation process, examine the "state-of the-art" in the use of metadata in support of digital preservation, and evaluate the prospects for a community-wide, consensus-building activity in the area of preservation metadata (Preservation Metadata for Digital Objects: A Review of the State of the Art http://www.oclc.org/research/pmwg/presmeta_wp.pdf)

• …to develop a framework outlining the types of information—i.e., metadata—that should be associated with an archived digital object. (A Metadata Framework to Support the Preservation of Digital Objects http://www.oclc.org/research/pmwg/pm_framework.pdf)

– an expanded conceptual structure for the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) information model, and

– a set of metadata elements, mapped to the conceptual structure and reflecting the information concepts and requirements articulated in the OAIS model.

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OCLC/RLG Efforts

Working Group II: PREservation Implementation Strategies (PREMIS)

• develop a core set of implementable preservation metadata elements, with broad applicability within the digital preservation community

• develop a data dictionary to support the preservation metadata element set

• examine and evaluate alternative strategies for the encoding, storage, and management of preservation metadata within a digital preservation system, as well as for the exchange of preservation metadata between systems

• develop a pilot program for testing the group’s recommendations and best practices in a variety of systems settings

• explore opportunities for the cooperative creation and sharing of preservation metadata

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Preservation Repositories:Projects based on OAIS Model

CEDARSNEDLIBPandoraCDLOCLC/RLG Working Group on

Preservation Metadata, Attributes of a Trusted Digital Repository, August 2001-

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Other Standards/Metadata Areas

• Synchronicity between media/streams• Performance Archive & Retrieval Working Group• Performing Arts Data Service (PADS)• Persistent Ids-• Website mgmt-• Technical Imaging Metadata-• Structural & Administrative Metadata-• Complexity of formats (storage & compression)-• Crosswalking Metadata-

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Persistent IDs--the Problem

• Need to separate work ID from work location

• URNs probably won’t be ready until 2003• Becomes a business process issue when one

organization maintains the resource and another organization references it (ie. licensed from vendors or managed by separate administrative structures)

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More Persistent IDs--the Approach for today

• PURLs

• Handles

• HTTP redirects

• And worry about costs now and conversion costs when URNs become feasible

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Website ManagementMore issues with referencing IDs

• References for mirror sites

• References for back-up sites when main site is down or bottle-necked

• References for off-site copies and archival copies

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NISO/DLF Technical Image Metadata Workshop--4/99

(Z39.87-2002 draft)

create metadata needed to manage images in digital repositories over long periods of time (full life-cycle mgmt)

document image provenance & historyensure that the images will be rendered

accurately on any output device

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METS

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Structural Metadata Standards for Encoding Multimedia-

(no time for details)

• SMIL

• MPEG 4, 7, 20

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Crosswalks

mapping btwn differing metadata structureseliminate the need for monolithic,

universally adopted standardsfocus on flexibility and interoperatiblityRDF-based metadata registries

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Crosswalk ExampleCDWAObject IDCIMISchema FDAVRA CoreCategories USMARCDUBLINCOREOBJECT/WORK (core)     DocumentClassification-CatalogLevel (core)DocumentClassification-Group Type

     

Object/Work-Type (core) Type ofObject objectNAMEDocumentClassification- DocumentType (core)Purpose-Purpose(Broad) (core)Purpose-Purpose(Narrow)

W1. WorkType 655 Genre-Form Type

Object/Work-Components   quantity DocumentClassification-Extent   300a PhysicalDescription-Extent  ORIENTATION/ARRANGEMENT

          DescriptionTITLES ORNAMES(core)

Title objectTitlebibliographicTitleGroup/ItemIdentification-RepositoryTitleGroup/ItemIdentification-DescriptiveTitle (core)Group/ItemIdentification-InscribedTitle

W2. Title 24Xa Titleand Title-RelatedInformationTitle 

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Other Digital Preservation Activities/Projects-

LC Natl Dig Info Infrastructure & Preservation InterPARES Electronic Literature Organization Emulation Projects E-Journal Archiving ERPANET

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LC’s National Digital Information Infrastructure and

Preservation Program• Authorized Dec 2000• LC, Dept of Commerce, NARA, White House

Office of Sci & Tech Policy• with help from CLIR, NLM, NAL, OCLC, RLG• Ongoing collab process• Commissioned papers on preserving: the Web,

periodicals, digital sound, E-Books, Digital TV, Digital Video

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InterPARES 2 International Research on Permanent Authentication Records

in Electronic Systems

• Ongoing international archival world project examining how to make electronically-generated records last over time

• Developing the theoretical and methodological knowledge needed, then will formulate model policies, strategies, and standards

• Reliability, accuracy, authenticity• In 2003 was extended to include dynamic,

interactive, and experiential works

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ELO Projects-

• For older works

• For works not yet created

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ELO: Uncle Buddy’s Funhouse

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ELO: Impermanence Agent

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ELO: Boyfriend Home from War

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ELO Research Approaches-Retrospective

• Focus on 8 older works representing– Text/lexia based hypertext/interactive works– Storyspace hypertext/interactive works– Hypertext/interactive works in “plain” html– Hypertext/interactive works incorporating more complexity (DHTML, layers, Javascript, CSS, …)

– Flash works– Director/Shockwave works– Interactive Fiction/Drama– Algorithmically-generated works

• Attempt various preservation/restoration methods– Archival repository to save the bits, maps/storyboards, software in hopes of future restoration breakthroughs– Write open source code to construct viewers to read the older works on today’s machines– Save supporting material (screen shots, videos of interactive sessions, interviews with the author/designer, interviews with users, …)

• Examine Results– Review how usable the works are under each method after 3 (5, 10) years

– Assess the cost, time, skills involved in each method

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ELO Research Approaches--Prospective

• Develop standards for encoding interactive behaviors, timing, etc.

• Gain community consensus for these standards

• Express these standards in terms of METS extensions and XML encoding

• Either convince vendors of authoring software to export to these standards, or design our own open-source authoring software

• Partner with a stable institution running a digital preservation repository, and use the encoded standards we develop as directions of how to handle works over time

• Develop model IP rights contracts that allow ELO to distribute a work if it’s no longer in distribution elsewhere

• Convince the community of authors to place copies of their works in ELO’s “dark archives”

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National Report:

Moving Image Preservation Education is critical

• Important to “Create a systematic graduate program for educating new film preservation professionals and continuing education opportunities for those already in the field”

• “ad hoc instruction is no longer adequate”• “The National Film Preservation Board will work toward the creation

of a master's degree program in film preservation at an American university and invite curriculum discussions with pertinent professional organizations.”

-Redefining Film Preservation: A National Plan (Recommendations of the Librarian of Congress in consultation with the National Film Preservation Board) Library of Congress Washington, D.C. August 1994

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Interdisciplinary; students need to

– learn the context in which each of these cultural artifacts were made– know the history of changing formats– need to be scientists and technologists who understand:

• the process of color changes• how certain stocks become too brittle to provide a flat focus for copying• how magnetic particles are laid on videotape and what causes the various types of

deterioration• how different computer files link and interact, (and how certain compression algorithms

cause various types of loss) so that they can anticipate preservation problems of compressed and hyper-linked digital works

– strong organizational and classification skills so that they can manage these collections and help others find things they want in them.

– administrative skills to manage these large preservation repositories (whether they be film, video, digital, or others).

– understand that preservation does not exist in a vacuum, and that they may have to become activists to prevent outside political forces from inadvertently trampling on our ability to preserve

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3 Educational Programs recently established

• Jeffrey Selznick School (1 year, no academic degree)

• UCLA (2 years, Masters degree)

• NYU (2 years, Masters degree)

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NYU’s MIAP: A curriculum for studying Moving Image

Archiving & Preservation

• Film History/Historiography and Film Style

• Conservation, Preservation, Storage, and Management

• Legal Issues and Copyright

• Laboratory Techniques

• Moving Image Cataloging

• Curatorial Work and Museum Studies

• Programming

• New Media and other Digital Technologies

• Access to Archival Holdings

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Our Graduates

• We are training a new generation of custodians of our cultural heritage• This training has to involve more than the kind of apprenticeship that has

traditionally characterized this field• To be an effective Moving Image Archivist in the future will require a

combination of the professional and the theoretical, and the ability to apply important traditions and concepts to communications technology of the future that we’ve never even dreamed of today

• We want our graduates to act as “change agents” in the organizations they go into

• We want to instill in them a commitment to preserve the future as well as the past

• many of us will need to work together to make sure that the moving image artifacts of the 20th century and beyond are available to our grandchildrens’ grandchildrens’ grandchildren.

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Conclusions for preserving all types of digital works:

Digital Repository Traditions & Services require

Sustainability InteroperabilityAccess

And all of these require Standards and Metadata

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Conclusions for preserving all types of digital works:From the technological point of view

Standards offer the best hope of overcoming Impediments

• Easier to maintain a single set of standards over long periods of time

• Puts your institution in the same large boat with lots of other institutions who will face obsolescence and migration problems periodically throughout the future

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for artistic and other challenging works:

How Best to save these works?• Use Standards wherever possible

• Be aggressive about asset mgmt -- saving component parts and ancillary materials

• Both creator and Archive should develop an institution-wide plan for saving electronic works– Refreshing and either migration or emulation

– Standard encoding schemes

– What is the work? And prioritize what needs to be saved

– Save ancillary materials and records

Museum Studies, 4/1/04

What can we do specific to electronic media?

• Works themselves may no longer even exist; in many cases, what we can save amounts to forensic evidence

• Enormous number of elements can, at times, be very important to preserve (pacing, original artifact, elements used to construct the artifact)

• Too complex to save every one of these aspects for every type of material

• Importance of saving pieces, representations, and documentation

• Involve creators & curators to capture intentions

• Importance of Standards

• Familiarize ourselves with recent conservation developments (Guggenheim’s Variable Media, Who Knows?, TechArcheology, Tate, IMAP)-

Museum Studies, 4/1/04

Paradigms Shifts needed

Old New

Physical preservation

atmospheric cntrl ongoing mgmt

What to save? artifact idea + ancillary material & documentation

Cataloging Individual work in hand

FRBR

Later access Artifact & documentation

Restaging, ancillary material & documentation

Tough Challenges in Preserving Electronic Works:Moving Images, Websites, and Electronic Art

Howard Besser, NYU Moving Image Archiving & Preservation Program

• http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Longevity/• http://www.tisch.nyu.edu/preservation • http://www.amianet.org/

• http://www.oclc.org/digitalpreservation/presmeta_wp.pdf• http://www.interpares.org• UC Libraries Systemwide Operations and Planning Advisory Group (SOPAG) Site

http://www.slp.ucop.edu/sopag/ for the UC Digital Preservation & Archiving Committee Final Report

• http://www.guggenheim.org/variablemedia/• http://www.getty.edu/gri/standard/intrometadata/

• http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue7_6/besser/• http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/~howard/Metadata/UC-May00/• http://www.niso.org/commitau.html • http://www.ifla.org/II/metadata.htm• METS official site: http://www.loc.gov/standards/mets

Museum Studies, 4/1/04

Preservation Metadata

OCLC/RLG Working Group on Preservation Metadata, Preservation Metadata for Digital Objects: A Review of the State of the Art, January 31 2001

OCLC/RLG Working Group on Preservation Metadata, A Recommendation for Content Information, October 2001

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Technical Image Metadata

Focus on Metadata that may prove helpful for

managementusepreservation...

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Technical Image Metadata

In Scope

still, bit-mapped pictorial imagesscanned/reformatted images (+ born digital)

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Technical Image Metadata

Out of Scope

vector imagesmoving imagesimages of OCR-able textstructural and hierarchical relationships

between imagesrights management, terms of use(authenticity/security)

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Technical Image Metadata

Technical Image Metadata-Z39.87

Image parameters (MIME type, compression, colorspace & profile, …)

Image Creation (source, capture info, etc.)Image performance assessment (sampling,

colormap, whitepoint, target data, etc.)Change history (source, processing, etc.)

Museum Studies, 4/1/04

Technical Image Metadata

Technical Image Metadata-Z39.87

additional XML implementation schema (MIX)

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Discovery Metadata

• Dublin Core - NISO Z39.85 (3/95)-

• CBIR (ongoing)

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Emulation Projects

• CAMiLEON (Michigan/Leeds)

• NEDLIB

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E-Journal Archiving

• Issues– License, don’t own; may not be even able to obtain right to make archival

copy

– Increasingly no paper back-up at all

– Usually we don’t have the important redundancy factor

• Mellon funded projects (2001)– Yale, Harvard, Penn working w/individual publishers

– Cornell, NYPL--specific disciplines

– MIT exploring characteristics that change (dynamic)\

– Stanford--archiving software tools

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Electronic Resource Preservation and Access NETwork (ERPANET)

• Best practices and skills development for digital preservation of cultural heritage and scientific objects

• 3 year project launched Nov 2001; 1.2 million Euros

Museum Studies, 4/1/04

Serious Longevity Problems

What we know from prior widespread digital file formats

Images separating from their metadataInaccessibility of software needed to view

an imageInability to even decode the file format of

an image

Museum Studies, 4/1/04