Stewardship of Digital Assets @ Palinet (Post 2)

Alright -- Onto Day 2 of my notes from the Stewardship of Digital Assets workshop!

Dr. Katherine Skinner from Emory University and the MetaArchive spoke for 3/4 of the day. Her interest in digital preservation has risen from her doctoral research on emergent fields. While digital preservation is a few steps beyond just stumbling in the dark at this point, it is still an emergent field and we should "get used to the discomfort" of what goes along with being on the bleeding edge.

In her definition, Skinner describes digital preservation as the "management and maintenance of digital information over a long period of time." How long, she says, is unknown at this point, but its sure is longer than many of our access systems will be around, which is currently running at about 3 years per system. This is why adopting recognized standards are important -- for interoperability -- between systems and between collaborating institutions.

Skinner's largest project of the last few years has been in developing the MetaArchive, which was in turn developed out of the Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe (LOCKSS) framework created by Stanford. The idea behind LOCKSS and the MetaArchive is that a minimum of 6 copies of information is stored across a large geographic space (could be even across several continents). Automated checks continually verify the accuracy and completeness of data. If anything happens to a single file in one of the repositories then the other 5 check to make sure their data is complete, and replace the bad or corrupt file in the 6th location. This idea of spreading information across a great geographic area could help restore information in the case of a major disaster. An example that Skinner gave was NPR content that was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina was able to be restored from the mirrored content kept at Emory University.

The biggest "AHA!" that came out of the day for me was that if you choose your access tool too early in the digital library design process, then your collection ends up becoming bound by the tool. By examining and fully understanding your collection, you can choose a tool that allows for curation of the materials that complements the care received by the analog materials. Process for selection should be identifying materials, seeing what information is available (ie. cataloging record) and then choose the metadata. Only when this process is complete should the tool be selected. I will have more thoughts on how this will change my approach to developing my repository in a later post.

The presentation was great, and the instructors knowledgable and friendly. They realize fully that as the field is new, no one really truly knows what they are doing for the long haul, and the more that we can help each other out, the more successful the digital preservation program will be.