Literature Review: Pratt in London 2013

1.) Boté, J., & Minguillón, J. (2012). Preservation of learning objects in digital repositories. RUSC, 9(1), 217-230.

The authors discuss using a digital repository at a university to ensure the preservation of virtual learning objects and enhanced learning tools. One challenge for this type of digital repository is that the repository must account for many different types of files and many different entities contributing into a single archive. The authors specifically discuss the challenges encountered by the repository at the Open University of Catalonia, where multiple departments add a variety of objects, from PDF lesson plans to statistical data. They emphasize the importance of using a repository that allows for long-term access to files, as continuing use is the goal of the repository. Additionally, they recommend undertaking a thorough risk assessment of items before they are added to the repository. For example, if an item is in a file format that is likely to be made obsolete, archivists can strategize on how to handle this problem (e.g. data migration) or if archiving the item should even be considered. Furthermore, they also point out the importance of adding complete metadata to allow for accessibility and preservation by future users. This article addresses an aspect of digital preservation that is especially challenging: unlike physical items, a great deal of processing must be done to digital files upfront. Items must be reviewed, assessed, and cataloged immediately if they are to be of any use in the future, especially if the file format is unstable or requires specific software to run. Physical objects may be put aside for years or even decades before an archive can process them with few ill-effects, but this would render most digital objects unusable. Digital preservation requires an entirely different, compressed timeframe than physical material, which can make it difficult for archivists and librarians to handle. Characterizing the initial processing as a “risk assessment” is very telling, and it is a useful way for me to think about it.

2.) Duranti, L. (2010). The long-term preservation of the digital heritage: The case of universities institutional repositories. JLIS.it,1(1), 157.

Duranti’s article describes an unclear aspect of digitization for preservation initiatives: the copyright implications for making a digital copy of a work. Do transformative or data migration methods of data preservation alter a digital-born work, thereby infringing on an author’s moral rights? Do archives and libraries in the United States have the same preservation rights under Section 108 of the Copyright Act when it comes to digital objects? Librarians have certainly recognized the need for clarification on this issue, but unfortunately US legislation is behind the technological curve. New laws addressing web archiving were just passed in the UK: it will be interesting to see how libraries and archives adapt to the laws in the next few years. The article brings up one action libraries should take for all archived digital objects, which is to keep detailed logs of any changes made to an item and to maintain the rights information. This is also very important when it comes to establishing authenticity and provenance, which is tricky for digital information. The authenticity of digital information is intertwined with the integrity of the host environment and therefore the institution. When undertaking digital preservation projects, including web archiving, it is in a library’s best interest to thoroughly document all of their procedures and decision-making for the sake of transparency. Institutional repositories have to be rigorous in maintaining their infrastructure and policies in order to ensure that their archives are trusted and useful to researchers.

 

3.) Ormond-Parker, L., & Sloggett, R. (2012). Local archives and community collecting in the digital age. Archival Science, 12(2), 191-212.

This article covered a very specific user community for digital archives, the Aboriginal community in Australia. While it focused on steps that the Australian government and members of the Aboriginal community should take to ensure ongoing support for their archives, it made me consider how these issues relate to digital preservation of other marginalized or underrepresented communities. The authors note the importance of archives for constructing the identity of a community, and how that can translate into real political and economic power. Digitization has been a key tool in uniting disparate archival records of Aboriginal communities into a central archive, which is managed by members of that community. Local community archives who have digital collections need national support, digital infrastructure and training to maintain and expand their value. These same needs apply to all digital archives, but the archives of outsider groups are at an even greater risk of loss because digital archives require so much ongoing maintenance and cost. At the same time, members of these outsider groups will probably have a wealth of digital material that would be important for these archives to collect: maybe not today, but in the near future archives will no longer be receiving boxes of papers and documents, they will be receiving hard drives, computers, and CDs. In my Projects in Digital Archives class, we worked with the Lesbian Herstory Archives to help digitize their cassette interviews. They are an important archive in the lesbian community, but it is not clear if they will be ready to receive and preserve the digital-born materials of the current generation of their community. For smaller or outsider archives, collaboration and partnerships with other archival institutions will be vital in being able to develop a digital preservation program.

 

4.) Seadle, M. (2012). Archiving in the networked world: Authenticity and integrity. Library Hi Tech, 30(3), 545-552.

Seadle reviews the differences between integrity and authenticity for an analog object compared to a digital object. The article explains the methods for checking digital integrity (e.g. checksums, etc.) but observes that there is little room for nuance. Either a digital copy matches the original bits exactly, or it doesn’t and so is therefore discarded. For physical items, slight differences between copies are more easily detected and evaluated. Rather than automatically discarding altered copies, these slight differences may have their own value (for example, a margin note in a copy of a manuscript). The concepts of analog integrity do not directly apply to digital objects, so we should not think of them in the same way. The article also notes the importance of the institution’s integrity to a digital object’s provenance: if a digital item is hosted at a long-term, secure site, we trust it more than an item that is hosted at a place with lax security measures. This can be an issue when we look at the archive of a digital repository against that of a commercial firm (like a publisher). A digital repository expects to maintain its data for decades and must rigorously maintain its preservation procedures. However, a commercial entity may not expect to last forever or anticipate outside users wanting to access its digital information, so they may not house their digital archives with the same standards. This is something to consider for libraries who use a publisher’s digital products: who maintains all that information? Is it possible for the library to archive it?

 

5.) Walters, T. O., & Skinner, K. (2010). Economics, sustainability, and the cooperative model in digital preservation. Library Hi Tech, 28(2), 259-272.

This article presented a possible solution for a sustainable digital preservation model, the cooperative or consortium model. It detailed the MetaArchive Cooperative and how it shares costs across member institutions to maintain digital archives. One benefit of the consortium model is that it supports and develops technology skills across member institutions. The authors caution against outsourcing digitization and preservation to third-party providers. Doing so, they argue, relinquishes control over digital projects and harms a library or archive’s responsibility as a cultural institution. Most critically, if digitization projects and ongoing maintenance are outsourced, it moves those skills out of the field of library and archival science and into the realm of for-profit businesses. It is vitally important that librarians and archivists develop and use these skills, instead of paying someone else to do it. This was an especially interesting article to read after the E-Publishing course, since so many of our speakers were from publishing businesses. While the authors acknowledge the usefulness of vendors, they still maintain that libraries and archives should develop as much technological knowledge and skills in-house. Since that involves a lot of effort and resources, the cooperative model is a good solution to sharing those costs. I wonder what the authors would say about the sort of public-private partnerships that ProQuest has embarked on – these fit the collaborative aspects of a cooperative but still involve a for-profit business.