Digital Preservation: Setting the Course for a Decade of Change

1
Digital PreservationSetting the Course for a
Decade of Change

• Neil Beagrie
• British Library
• Bibliotheque royale de Belgique
• November 2007

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Focus of this lecture

• Trends past (paper)? current (hybrid) ? future
  (more paper much more digital)
• Licensed e-journals
• e-science / e-research
• e-special collections and personal archives
• European Initiatives
• Conclusions

3
Trends
4
Predicted Growth of Serials Publications (after
EPS for e-legal deposit)
All serials (print e-)
Dual form
e-only serials
5
Computer Processing Power and Storage
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Growth of Scientific Data and Data Curation

• 
  
• In next 5 years e-Science will produce more data
  than has been collected in the whole of human
  history
• Data growth Protein Data Bank (1972- 07/2005)

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e-Journals and preservation
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Archiving E- Publications

• 2006 ARL/CLIR study E-Journal Archiving Metes and
  Bounds A Survey of the Landscape available from
  lthttp//www.clir.org/pubs/abstract/pub138abst.html
  gt
• 2003/4 JISC e-journal archiving study by Maggie
  Jones available from
• lthttp// www. jisc. ac. uk/ index. cfm? name
  project_epub_ archivinggt

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Issues Identified

• Few journals are solely in digital form at this
  stage but parallel print/ e- access can only be
  regarded either as interim or partial equivalents
• Perpetual access and archiving concerns
• What guarantees do libraries have when they
  licence access to digital material they dont own
  (and it is served from outside national
  boundaries)?
• Concerns about continued access following
  termination of a licence are a major inhibiting
  factor for libraries wishing to move to e- only
  access

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Emerging Services

• Publishers negotiating dark archives for their
  back files (eg Elsevier)
• E-legal deposit laws in several countries and
  national libraries establishing e-journal
  archiving programs (eg BL, KB, DB)
• Third-party and consortial services (eg Portico,
  LOCKSS,OCLC digital archive)
• Research Funders creating open-access archives of
  funded research articles (eg NIH, Wellcome Trust)

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Principles?

• I suggest we need to identify some core
  principles and aims for funders/publishers/custome
  rs
• Support diversity of solutions/services - why?
• State of knowledge and different approaches
  adopted risks in single preservation or business
  model approach
• Diversity of content included in different
  services risks from gaps in content coverage
• Support multi-node and multi-national instances
  why?
• not just backup/recovery long-term
  geographical/political/cultural risks need to be
  addressed
• Scholarly communication is international and
  intellectual capital/content/publishing of
  e-journals is international
• Support professional trusted preservation
  repositories and services

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e-Research and preservation(UK Science and
Innovation Investment Framework 2004 2014)
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Information Infrastructure

• 2.23 The growing UK research base must have ready
  and efficient access to information of all kinds
  such as experimental data sets, journals,
  theses, conference proceedings and patents.
• 2.24 It is clear that the research community
  needs access to information mechanisms which
  systematically collect, preserve and make
  available digital information.
• 2.25 The Government via DTI will therefore work
  with interested funders and stakeholders to
  consider the national e-infrastructure (hardware,
  networks, communications technology) necessary to
  deliver an effective system.

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Preservation Curation WG

• There will be dramatic growth in digital research
  data and publications over the next decade
• Requirement to transform information provision so
  that UK researchers can benefit from the new
  research opportunities it will create
• There are major challenges in the preservation
  and curation of digital information
• Where disciplinary data centres and services
  exist they represent approx 1.4-1.5 of total
  research expenditure
• Outlined preservation components of
  infrastructure

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Libraries, e-research, and preservation

• Some issues to consider
• Different staffing/support structures for
  publications/data
• Disciplinary differences in e-research
• 8020 rule and implications for cataloguing or
  digital preservation

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Digital Special Collectionsand preservation
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British Library Personal Archives

• Relevant (digital) special collections in BL
• Literary papers and correspondence
• History of science
• Web-archiving (blogs)
• Oral history
• Digital Lives research theme
• Synergies between different projects and
  collecting areas inter-action with digital
  preservation or access research

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Literary letters

• New York Times Essay 4 September 2005

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Web-archiving - blogs

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POLITICS web-archiving
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Digital Lives Research Project

• Partners British Library, UCL(SLAIS), Bristol
  (IT and Law).
• Funded by Arts and Humanities Research Council
  from Sept 07- March 09
• Website and blog www.bl.uk/digital-lives

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Digital Lives Preservation Challenges

• Digital memory over a human lifetime and beyond
  for individuals
• Challenges-
• Software and hardware obsolescence
• Media life and data loss
• Ephemeral data eg web-pages, email
• Dispersal multiple email/storage/publishing
  systems
• More pro-active preservation strategies needed
• Libraries need to engage in research for future
  digital special collections

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European Initiatives

• Libraries e-depot (KB) Kopal (DB and partners)
  DOM (British Library)
• Archives PRONOM and Digital Archive (TNA) Swiss
  National Archives Dutch National Archive
• EU FP7 PLANETS CASPAR Digital Preservation
  Europe Alliance Permanent Access to Records of
  Science.
• Europe leading the world currently ahead of US
  and emerging economies? but see iPRES 2008

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Conclusions
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Evolution or Revolution?

• Evolution
• Print/Digital inter-dependencies collective
  print storage and digitisation
• Ongoing care of existing collections - lifecycle
  approaches to collection care and digital
  preservation
• Revolution
• New digital preservation networks and services
• Professional networks eg Digital Preservation
  Coalition cross professional boundaries linking
  archives/libraries/data centres (national
  developments international?)
• New types of service and organisations eg File
  Format Registries, LOCKSS, PORTICO
• New (or more significance for) Digital Objects
  e-journals, e-research, e-special collections
• Acceleration of Scale and Automation for print
  and digital
• Reaching tipping points in print/digital mix
  over next decade

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Future of Preservation
Digital will begin to dominate