California Digital Library

The Planets project is developing a service-oriented environment for the definition and evaluation of preservation strategies for human-centric data. It focuses on the question of logically preserving digital materials, as opposed to the physical preservation of content bit-streams. This includes the development of preservation tools for the automated characterization, migration, and comparison of different types of digital objects as well as the emulation of their original runtime environment in order to ensure longtime access and interpretability. The Planets integrated environment provides a number of end-user applications that allow data curators to execute and scientifically evaluate preservation experiments based on composable preservation services. In this paper, we focus on the middleware and programming model and show how it can be utilized in order to create complex preservation workflows.

The Danish Ministry of Culture is currently funding a project to set up a model for costing preservation of digital materials held by national cultural heritage institutions. The overall objective of the project is to provide a basis for comparing and estimating future financial requirements for digital preservation and to increase cost effectiveness of digital preservation activities. In this study we describe an activity based costing methodology for digital preservation based on the OAIS Reference Model. In order to estimate the cost of digital migrations we have identified cost critical activities by analysing the OAIS Model, and supplemented this analysis with findings from other models, literature and own experience. To verify the model it has been tested on two sets of data from a normalisation project and a migration project at the Danish National Archives. The study found that the OAIS model provides a sound overall framework for cost breakdown, but that some functions, especially when it comes to performing and evaluating the actual migration, need additional detailing in order to cost activities accurately.

Effective digital preservation depends on a set of preservation services that work together to ensure that digital objects can be preserved for the long-term. These services need digital preservation metadata, in particular, descriptions of the properties that digital objects may have and descriptions of the requirements that guide digital preservation services. This paper analyzes how these services interact and use this metadata and develops a data dictionary to support them.

The term "Significant Properties" has been given a variety of definitions and used in various ways over the past several years. The relationship between Significant Properties and the OAIS term Representation Information has been a puzzle. This paper proposes a definition of Significant Properties which provides a way to clarify this relationship and indicates how the concept can be used in a coherent way. We believe that this approach is consistent with the actual use of the concept and does not invalidate the previous pieces of work but rather provides a clear and consistent view of the concept. It also links together Authenticity and Provenance which are also key concepts in digital preservation.

nestor, the German network of expertise in digital preservation started as a time-limited project in 2003. Besides the establishment of a network of expertise with an information platform, working groups, and training opportunities, a central goal of the project phase was to prepare a sustainable organization model for the network's services. In July 2009, nestor transformed into a sustainable organization with 6 of the 7 project partners and 2 additional organizations entering into a consortium agreement. The preparation of the sustainable organization was a valuable experience for the project partners because vision and mission of the network were critically discussed and refined for the future organization. Some more aspects were identified that also need further refinement in order to make nestor fit for the future. These aspects shall be discussed in the paper.

Only a small part of the research which has been carried out to date on the preservation of digital objects has looked specifically at the preservation of software. This is because the preservation of software has been seen as a less urgent problem than the preservation of other digital objects, and also the complexity of software artifacts makes the problem of preserving them a daunting one. Nevertheless, there are good reasons to want to preserve software. In this paper we consider some of the motivations behind software preservation, based on an analysis of software preservation practice. We then go on to consider what it means to preserve software, discussing preservation approaches, and developing a performance model which determines how the adequacy of the a software preservation method. Finally we discuss some implications for preservation analysis for the case of software artifacts.

A digital repository can be seen as a combination of services, resources, and policies. One of the fundamental design questions for digital repositories is how to break down the services and resources: who will have responsibility, where they will reside, and how they will interact. There is no single, optimal answer to this question. The most appropriate arrangement depends on many factors that vary across repository contexts and are very likely to change over time. This paper reports on our investigation and testing of various repository "slicing and dicing" scenarios, their potential benefits, and implications for implementation, administration, and service offerings. Vital considerations for each option (1) efficiencies of resource use, (2) management of dependencies across entities, and (3) the repository business model most appropriate to the participating organizations.

Library and Archives Canada has a wide mandate to preserve and provide access to Canadian published heritage, records of national significance, as well as to acquire the records created by the Government of Canada, deemed to be of historical importance. To address this mandate, Library and Archives Canada has undertaken the development of a digital preservation infrastructure covering policy, standards and enterprise applications which will serve requirements for ingest, metadata management, preservation and access. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the efforts underway to engage digital recordkeeping activities in the Government of Canada and to influence and align those processes with LAC digital preservation requirements. The LAC strategy to implement preservation considerations early in the life cycle of the digital record is to establish a mandatory legislative and policy framework for recordkeeping in government. This includes a Directive on Recordkeeping, Core Digital Records Metadata Standard for archival records, Digital File Format Guidance, as well as Web 2.0 and Email Recordkeeping Guidelines. The expected success of these initiatives, and collaborative approach should provide a model for other digital heritage creators in Canada.

Specimens of early computer systems stop working every day. One storage medium that was popular for home computers in the 1980s was the audio tape. The first home computer systems allowed the use of standard cassette players to record and replay data. Audio tapes are more durable than old home computers when properly stored. Devices playing this medium (i.e. tape recorders) can be found in working condition or can be repaired as they are made out of standard components. By re-engineering the format of the waveform the data on such media can then be extracted from a digitized audio stream. This work presents a case study of extracting data created on an early home computer system, the Philips G7400. Results show that with some error correction methods parts of the tapes are still readable, even without the original system. It also becomes clear, that it is easier to build solutions now when the original systems are still available.

This paper will describe the tools and infrastructure components which have been implemented by the CASPAR project to support repositories in their task of long term preservation of digital resources. We address also the capture and preservation of digital rights management and evidence of authenticity associated with digital objects. Moreover examples of ways to evaluate a variety of preservation strategies will be discussed as will examples of integrating the use of these infrastructure components and tools into existing repository systems. Examples will be given of a rich selection of digital objects which encode information from a variety of disciplines including science, cultural heritage and also contemporary performing arts.