Title Goes Here July 29, 2004

Transcription

1 Title Goes Here July 29, 2004

2 Digital Curation for Beginners: An Archival View for Librarians ALA ACRL Digital Curation Interest Group Webinar March 24, 2014 Lisa Snider Electronic Records Archivist Harry Ransom Center -University of Texas at

3 How About You? Please type in the chat area on the bottom right side. Are you a librarian, archivist? If other, let me know what field you are in. Give me an idea of audience.

4 Thanks to the ACRL Digital Curation Interest Group Thanks to the organizers (Suzanna Conrad, Yasmeen Shorish and Megan Toups) of this webinar program!

5 About Me I was a web developer for over 17 years, and ran my web development business for 14 years. I moved to archives in I received my MAS and MLIS degrees from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, B.C., Canada in May I worked as an analog archivist, records manager and have done projects for a public library system.

6 My Digital Archives Journey I have been working as a Digital Archivist for the last 3.5 years. I am currently the Born Digital Archivist at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. I provide long term preservation, storage and permanent access (soon) to born digital materials. I have worked with all aspects, such as: accession, donor relations, appraisal, rights, arrangement & description, storage, file format migration, public access, etc. I have worked with physical materials and online (cloud) materials.

7 What Is the Digital Curation Lifecycle? Let us break it down! Digital includes two things:

8 What Is Digital? Digitized materials: An object is scanned and it becomes a digital image file.

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10 What Is Digital?-2 Born digital materials: A digital file is created with a computer device, such as a tablet, smartphone, desktop computer, laptop, Google Glass, etc. These files are commonly found on legacy media (floppy disks), new media (external hard drive) or in the cloud online (Facebook page). Ex: PowerPoint presentation, Word doc, digital photograph (JPEG), etc.

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12 Think Lady Gaga (and this born digital file!)

13 Does Content Matter? The digital is what matters, not the content. The digitized and born digital materials can include anything, such as: Manuscripts Sound Video Websites/Social Media/Blogs Maps Photographs Researcher Data (can be humanities, science, etc.) University Records E-Books

14 What Is Curation? Today it is a word that is morphing into mainstream use.

15 What Is Digital Curation? I think the word curation throws people off. I don t think it says what it should-words fail us sometimes Today it is used in so many areas, let s curate shoes!

16 What is Digital Curation for Librarians/Archivists? Digital curation involves the selection/acquisition, maintenance, preservation, storage and access of digital research data and/or digital donor material throughout its lifecycle Digital Curation Centre (UK) *I took out the words adding value and added in the bolded words. Basically, digital curation is what we do with digital material from when we first receive it/make it to the preservation, storage and access of it.

17 What is the Lifecycle? I see the lifecycle representing all the parts of the digital curation process, or all pieces of the digital curation pie.

18 The Digital Curation Lifecycle Here is the most popular diagram used to show the major parts of the digital curation lifecycle.

19 cb /muppet/images/4/43/cookie.fbvideo.png It is the scary ball!

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22 Don t Fear The Scary Ball (Cookie)! I will now talk about the major parts of the digital curation lifecycle. In doing so, I will explain the scary ball!

23 The First Piece of the Digital Curation Lifecycle Pie Without digital materials, we are nothing! Born digital material Ex: Lady Gaga. Digitized material Ex: Cat in the dress (robes).

24 The Second Piece of the Digital Curation Lifecycle Pie Selection/Acquisition We have to get these digital materials from somewhere. Archivists acquire digital materials from donors. Librarians select digital material (for the most part). We both select material to be digitized.

25 The Third Piece of the Digital Curation Lifecycle Pie Appraisal

26 Appraisal Think of Antiques Roadshow appraisals!

27 Appraisal-2 We both deal with value, but for very different reasons/purposes and in different ways. When appraising digital materials, one usually asks: What is this? Is it important? Why is it important? Is it worth millions, unique, cool? Do we want it? Does it fit into what we have? Can we take care of it?

28 What is it? Does it fit with our collection? Scanned because it was important? Why?

29 The Fourth Piece of the Digital Curation Lifecycle Pie We make sense of our digital materials for ourselves and others.

30 Archivists Arrange Archivists arrange digital material. We look at all the archival material and organize it in accordance with accepted archival principles (provenance and original order). We arrange things into series, items, folders, etc. This is done so that researchers/users can find things. For digital material, this is more difficult than with analog materials. Think professional organizers and what they do. [NOTE: Archivists do way more, but this is the closest analogy.]

31 700px wide/hero/napo%20starwars%20before After.jpg?

32 Archivists Describe Archivists describe digital material. We describe our arrangement, materials, provenance, original order, context and research, and it all goes into a document called a finding aid. The finding aid is used by researchers/users. I call it a road map. Think of description like a professional organizer detailing what they worked with, where they put things and why they were grouped. [NOTE: Archivists do way more, but this is the closest analogy.]

33 Librarians Arrange & Describe In Another Way In my view librarians arrange & describe. Librarians arrange by indexing, creating facets, etc. They create catalogue descriptions.

34 The Fifth Piece of the Digital Curation Lifecycle Pie Metadata is created. Data about data, or information about the digital file. Our digital materials are invisible without metadata, for us and our users! We use standards (pick your acronym) to describe what we have: Dublin Core, METS, PREMIS, RDF, EAD, RAD, ISAD-G, DACS, MARC, etc.

35 Without metadata, this is just a cute cat with no value to anyone!

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37 The Sixth Piece of the Digital Curation Lifecycle Pie Preservation (long term) It is NOT storage, storage is only one part of the preservation process.

38 Preservation We want to preserve the original digital material as exact as possible. We use forensic techniques to clone everything, whenever possible. We have the original and the copy, as we see here

39 karoleebahr.jpg

40 Preservation-2 We then make two copies of this cloned original: 1. Preservation copy: the forever copy that we try never to touch. 2. Access copy: the copy that is given to patrons so they can use and abuse it at will.

41 Here is the confusing thing Preservation-3 We don t just clone the original clone to make those two copies.

42 Preservation copy Preservation-4 We have software that looks at each file on the cloned original, and as it is copying the file it asks: Is this file in a stable and open file format that could still be used/read in 5-10 years? and If it isn t, can we convert it to one? Sometimes that answer is yes, and sometimes no. This process of using different file formats is called normalization.

43 Preservation copy Preservation-5 Ex: We get in a PSD (Photoshop) file. This format is widely used, but as archivists we feel that a more stable and open format would be TIFF. Thus, for our preservation copy the original PSD file would be converted into a TIFF file.

44 Access copy Slightly different approach Preservation-6 We look at stable and open file formats that could still be used/read in 5-10 years, AND we focus on what software viewing programs researchers/users will use to view the file. Again sometimes we can find better file formats, and sometimes we can t.

45 Access copy Preservation-7 Ex: Our PSD (Photoshop) file was turned into a TIFF for preservation, but we would turn it into a JPEG for the access copy. JPEGs can be read by almost any software-nothing fancy needed for them! See Archivematica Format Policies for examples of preservation and access formats.

46 Why do we try to change file formats? Think dating Preservation-8 Don t you want someone who will be stable and open (with their feelings!) five to ten years into the relationship? Do I even mention the word normal here?

47 Migration Preservation-9 We should be looking at all our files at regular intervals (usually 5 years) to see if more normalization (changing file formats) is needed. Why do this? File formats may change in that time, and we might have different preservation and access copy standards for them. Many people don t call this re-normalization, instead the term migration is used. Great Artefactual presentation explaining the difference between normalization and migration (and why formats are chosen).

48 Preservation-10 There are many software programs that can help us preserve materials. Some people use DSpace and Fedora. I am more partial to preservation programs such as: Archivematica, Preservica, etc.

49 The Seventh Piece of the Digital Curation Lifecycle Pie Storage We need to store all these digital files (the original, preservation copy and access copy) in safe places so they last for years and years. Best practice is to have a copy of our digital files on three different types of storage, with one being outside the work area, in case of disaster. LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe). Here are the most common storage options:

50 highlights/server-poweredge-t310-overview1.jp Server-Think Desktop Computers on Steroids

51 External Hard Drive-Like The One At Home! h

52 RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) 5 or 6 external hard drives linked together (think kindergarten kids), so we can make redundant copies in one place. Your external hard drive is now a super drive!

53 RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) 5 or 6 external hard drives linked together (think kindergarten kids), so we can make redundant copies in one place. Your external hard drive is now a super drive!

54 jpg LTO (Linear Tape Open) Old school magnetic tape. Holds a lot and is very stable.

55 computing.jpg Cloud You store your materials on someone else s server, located anywhere in the world. It can be cheap, but there are issues that must be considered.

56 The Last Piece of the Digital Curation Lifecycle Pie Access

57 Access Both librarians and archivists want people to use our materials, but sometimes that gets tricky. Archivists work with restricted materials. Both archivists and librarians deal with major copyright/rights issues.

58 Access-2 We can give researchers/users access in a manual way. Ex: Put digital files on a memory stick and plug that into a laptop for them to use in a reading room setting. Software programs can be used to show researchers/users what digital materials are available for access. Ex: ContentDM, Fedora, DSpace, ArchivesSpace, ATOM, etc.

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60 That Scary Ball Shouldn t Be Scary Now You have now conquered the scary ball! Note: We just covered all the sequential actions, and touched on the occasional and full lifecycle ones. There is a good description of the different types of actions (full, sequential and occasional), and what parts of the digital curation lifecycle they are associated with, at:

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62 Congratulations! You now know the basics of the digital curation lifecycle!

63 Thank You! Thank you for listening! Questions? Lisa Snider Electronic Records Archivist Harry Ransom