Sustainable models for digital preservation

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Sustainable models for digital preservation
Sustainability Models for Digital Preservation,
Brussels, 29-30 Nov, 2007
Adam Farquhar The British Library
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Outline of presentation

• Motivation for workshop
• Brief introduction to Planets
• Typical preservation scenarios
• Planets outputs
• What might the market look like
• Types of models you will do better!

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Motivation Project and funding cycle
StrategyTech. changeOrg. needsConsumer needs
Sustained Products Tools Services
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Motivation Do better!

• Need is generic
• All successful funded projects have it
• Track record is mixed
• Many projects end with a report filed on a shelf
• Project participants have limited experience
• Rarely have connections with VC or other
  investment resources
• Rarely have skills in market and revenue
  development!
• Goal of workshop
• Bring together a broader range of experience
• Expand thinking beyond the obvious models
• Identify success criteria
• Narrow thinking to likely candidates
• Identify what works for Planets

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Plantes overview

• A 4-year research and technology development
  project co-funded by the European Union to
  address core digital preservation challenges
• Started June 2006 with 15m budget
• Coordinated by the British Library
• Involves 16 partners including national libraries
  and archives, leading technology companies and
  research universities
• Builds on strong digital archiving and
  preservation programmes
• Focuses on the needs of libraries and archives
• But underlying technology is domain neutral

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Aims and objectives

• Increase Europes ability to ensure long-term
  access to its cultural and scientific heritage
• Improve decision-making about long term
  preservation
• Ensure long-term access to valued digital content
• Control the costs of preservation actions through
  increased automation, scaleable infrastructure
• Ensure wide adoption across the user community
  and establish market place for preservation
  services and tools
• Basic assumptions
• Digital material has real long-term value
• Technology change makes digital material
  increasingly difficult to access
• New digital preservation technology can reduce
  costs and unlock access to older digital material
• Build practical solutions
• Integrate existing expertise, designs and tools
• Deliver tools and services that can be used in an
  operational environment

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Planets partners

• The British Library
• National Library, Netherlands
• Austrian National Library
• State and University Library, Denmark
• Royal Library, Denmark
• National Archives, UK
• Swiss Federal Archives
• National Archives, Netherlands

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Planets partners

• Tessella Plc
• IBM Netherlands
• Microsoft Research
• Austrian Research Centers GmbH
• Hatii at University of Glasgow
• University of Freiburg
• Technical University of Vienna
• University of Cologne

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Losing digital information hurts everyone

• An NHS doctor needs a 1987 clinical study found
  on Google Scholar
• She tries to open the dvi file, but cant
• A father shows his children the computer game he
  wrote in school
• He wrote the game in PDP assembler
• He stored the program on paper tape
• A small business owner wants to market the energy
  saving device it developed in 1985
• She carefully stored all of the files
• Now she doesnt have the applications to read the
  documents, spread-sheets, and CAD drawings
• The CAD company is long out of business

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Losing digital information costs opportunity

• A university research lab has provided its data,
  technical reports, software on-line since 1984
  and on the web since 1990. The professor retires
  and closes the lab in 2004
• A university IP officer wants to defend a patent
  challenge
• A biographer wants review the unpublished work
• A former student wants to revive a line of
  research
• The digital files
• Some are damaged
• Some rely on applications that are out-of-use
• Some rely on hardware that is unavailable
• Some rely on an environment that no longer exists
• Some rely on information that no-one recorded

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Losing digital information costs money

• An oil company collected extensive data for a
  reservoir and want to exploit it in 2007
• All documents and data are held in v1.3 of an
  integrated management product
• They now use v9.0 and cant read or access it
• An oilfield services company collects dipmeter
  data in the 1970s
• Stored on 7-Track tapes
• Recorded in optimised formats
• Difficult and expensive to repeat measurement data

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How big is the problem?

• Who is touched by digital preservation problems?
• Individual consumers
• Small and medium sized enterprises
• Large corporations
• University libraries, faculties, institutes
• Publishers
• Libraries
• Local, regional, national governments
• every person or organisation that keeps digital
  material for more than 15 years!

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Whats in it for a National Library?

• Planets will provide the technology component of
  our digital preservation solution Richard
  Boulderstone, BL Director, 15/06/07
• Planets will enable us to
• Profile our digital collections against our
  policies
• Identify and diagnose problems in our digital
  collections
• Compare different treatment plans
• Select and implement treatment for a wide range
  of problems
• Verify that the treatment was successful
• Know how solutions work through empirical
  evidence
• and encourage vendors and service providers to
  provide these capabilities to us

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Planets architecture
Digital Content
Preservation Action Services
Org. Context
Test Bedevaluation and validation services
External Context
Characterisation Services
Technical Environment
Interoperability Framework
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Planets architecture key components

• Preservation planning
• tools and services for formulating and selecting
  preservation plans
• take into account multiple factors
• Preservation characterisation
• tools and services for automatic analysis of
  digital objects technical and intellectual
  characteristics
• supporting registry of characterisation
  information
• Preservation action
• methodology for describing preservation action
  tools
• supporting registry
• migration and emulation tools
• Testbed
• hardware and software environment for evaluation
  tools and services
• assessment of individual tools as well as
  execution of preservation plans
• Interoperability framework
• service-oriented architecture
• decouples tools from original implementation
  environment

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Key outputs

• Intellectual property
• Software tools
• Service definitions
• Deployed services
• Data
• Tools, services, formats, properties, policies
• Experience
• Case studies, policy and collection profiles
• Training programme

• Preservation planning
• Preservation characterisation
• Preservation actions
• Quality assurance
• Benchmarking
• Adaptors for key repositories
• Not the repository

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Some considerations

• Organisational structure
• Open source
• Grant funded
• Commercial partnership
• Commercial license
• Start-up
• Organisational type
• Hosted service provider
• Consultancy
• System integrator
• Software vendor
• Repository vendor
• Storage vendor

• Reach
• National
• International
• For-profit
• Not-for-profit
• Revenue source
• Government agency
• Enterprise
• SME
• Consumer

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Conclusion

• We need your help
• To think outside of the box
• To learn what leads to success
• To separate the wheat from the chaff
• To learn what the next steps are
• To improve the way that funded projects
  transition to a sustainable model