Data Preservation

1. Data Preservation Creating trustworthy archives

2. Digital Preservation does not happen by accident • To preserve digital information, we need to take careful, conscious, planned action. • Digital information will become unusable without this! ICPSR 2012

3. Preservation is about Trust, not Technology • Technology provides tools, not solutions. • No technology works without careful planning and implementation. • We need to trust the people and institutions who build preservation systems. ICPSR 2012

4. Digital Preservation is about Understandability • All digital information is just ones and zeros. • Preserving those ones and zeros is useless unless we can understand them. • We need to know how to render, display, interpret, and understand the bits. • Digital Information requires a context. • Provenance, etc. ICPSR 2012

5. Communities define Understandability • It is people who “understand” content, not machines. ICPSR 2012

6. Standards for Digital Preservation • OAIS • TRAC / TDR ICPSR 2012

7. OAIS Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS) http://public.ccsds.org/publications/archive/650x0b1.pdf CCSDS 651.0-B-1 Consultative Committee for Space Data System “Blue Book” ISO 14721:2003 International Organization for Standardization http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=24683 ICPSR 2012

8. OAIS ICPSR 2012

9. Three Key OAIS concepts • Reference Model • The Long Term • Designated Communities ICPSR 2012

10. OAIS is a “reference model” • Not an implementation • Provides framework • Provides concepts • Provides terminology • Provides a foundation ICPSR 2012

11. OAIS What is a “Reference Model”? model implementation

12. OAIS What is a “Reference Model”? • It does not prescribe how to build an archive. • It gives you the terminology to describe what you do and how you do it. • It defines “responsibilities.”

13. OAIS What is a “Reference Model”? • It does not make decisions for you.

14. OAIS What is a “Reference Model”? • It helps you identify the decisions you must make. • It helps you choose wisely among alternatives. • It helps you define what you do.

15. OAIS Reference Model What a Reference Model is Not: • Not an implementation. • Not a system or software or hardware. • Not about file formats. • Not about particular metadata standards.

16. OAIS Reference Model Ref. Model for a “Land Vehicle” Propulsion Steering Breaking

17. OAIS Implementations: Reference Model Ref. Model for a “Land Vehicle” Propulsion Steering Breaking

18. OAIS The Long Term • “Indefinitely” • “Permanently” Long Term: A period of time long enough for there to be concern about the impacts of changing technologies, including support for new media and data formats, and of a changing user community, on the information being held in a repository. This period extends into the indefinite future. [1.7]

19. OAIS The Long Term • It is specifically applicable to organizations with the responsibility of making information available for the Long Term. (1.2)

20. OAIS The Long Term Permanence of the Information…not the institution. “The information being maintained has been deemed to need Long Term Preservation,even if the OAIS itself is not permanent.” [1.1]

21. OAIS The Long Term Not just ‘bit storage’ -- but long-term informationpreservation, and access, and understandability. [2]

22. OAIS The Long Term For years, preservation simply meant collecting. The sheer act of pulling a collection of manuscripts from a barn, a basement, or a parking garage and placing it intact in a dry building with locks on the door fulfilled the fundamental preservation mandate of the institution. In this regard, preservation and access have been mutually exclusive activities often in constant tension. In the digital world, the concept of access is transformed from a convenient byproduct of the preservation process to its central motif. The content, structure, and integrity of the information object assume center stage; the ability of a machine to transport and display this information object becomes an assumed end result of preservation action rather than its primary goal. • Paul Conway, "Preservation in the Digital World” (1996) http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/conway2/

23. OAIS The Long Term • Information must be: • Not just preserved, but discoverable.[2.2.2] • Not just discoverable, but deliverable. [2.3.3] • Not just deliverable as bits, but readable. [2.2.1] • Not just readable, but understandable. [2.2.1] • Not just understandable, but usable. [4.1.1.5]

24. OAIS The Long Term How do you know if your information is usable? • The archive must ask questions and make decisions. • The archive must design an implementation to address the needs of its Designated Community.

25. OAIS The Designated Community An identified group of potential Consumers who should be able to understand a particular set of information. The Designated Community may be composed of multiple user communities. [1.7]

26. OAIS How to use OAIS • For planning, review, and evaluation • For communication

27. OAIS How to use OAIS • For communication • With producers • Within your own organization • Colleagues • Management • With other archives and partners • With users