Special Collections Staff Attend 'Stewardship of Digital Assets' Workshop
The qualities of digital media are well-known: their agility, portability and scalability, among others. Their one down-side seems to be the result of their usefulness: we can't keep up the ratio of preservation to advances in technology. A couple of years ago, we attended a week-long workshop on digital preservation at Cornell University, and one of the slogans of this really excellent workshop was "there is no silver bullet" in terms of preservation of digital assets. We came away from that workshop with strong ideas on how to get started and created a campus-wide survey on the types of digitalia being employed and methods used to preserve them.
On November 14 & 15, 2007, David Conners and Diana Peterson attended a workshop held at the new PALINET headquarters in Philadelphia entitled "Stewardship of Digital Assets," which the organizers subtitled "sustaining digital collections." About 40 people attended the PALINET workshop from a variety of institutions: museums, public libraries, community colleges, universities, government, and businesses. Haverford was one of the smaller institutions represented; most attendees came from government institutions like NARA, the Pennsylvania and Delaware State libraries, even the Supreme Court of Canada. The trainers included Liz Bishoff, former Executive Director of the Colorado Digitization Program; Tom Clareson, Program Director for New Initiatives at PALINET; Robin Dale, former Program Manager for Preservation at RLG; and Katherine Skinner, Co-Director of the MetaArchive Cooperative.
While the expression "there is no silver bullet" was still uttered, it was not a slogan. In the final analysis, we wrote up a strategies statement based on our assessment of risk of loss in which we listed: increased institutional buy- in for digital preservation; an expansion of the previously formulated survey; an improvement of our backup procedures for digital objects; transfer of digital objects on superseded formats and CD and DVD to spinning disks; and consideration of the future of digital objects that are produced in proprietary formats. We listed the personnel and stakeholders we considered vital in this undertaking and broke down our preservation plan to the level of implementation. Finally, we projected financial needs and potential resources.
Following are some of the points presented in the workshop that merit notice in this report and some further detail to the strategies statement outlined above
1) A short definition of digital preservation as prepared by ALCTS suggests that it is the combination of policies, strategies and actions that ensure access to digital content over time. Integral to these propositions are such factors as assigning responsibility for digital preservation to staff, technical specifications, reliable master files, sufficient descriptive, administrative and structural metadata to ensure future access and a quality control procedure. In addition are such factors as disaster preparedness, programs to refresh, migrate and emulate digital data, and, of course, sources of funding. One way to get started may be to hire a consultant.
2) We had always thought of back-up of our various digital formats (think: websites, email, data sets, GIS, images, audio, video, among others) as synonymous with preservation, but, while this continues to be of significance, it lacks the necessary aspect of long-term preservation or structural integrity. Best practices also dictate the employment of standards, oversight to curry to new media and a system of LOCKSS (lots of copies keep stuff safe).
3) While we might aspire to being a Trustworthy Repository (http://www.crl.edu/content.asp?l1=13&l2=58&l3=162&l4=91) that ingests all digital material produced by the college and provides it safe, updated and authenticated harbor until its egress at any point, the cost in terms of personnel and money may be greater than what Haverford can afford. There is a good deal of literature on life cycle preservation for digital media, and a number of institutions that are gearing up to step into this role.
4) Katherine Skinner gave one of the more interesting presentations when she talked about the founding and organization of the MetaArchive Cooperative (http://MetaArchive.org). The MetaArchive is a cooperative made up currently of Emory, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, Florida State, and Auburn. They use a LOCKSS (http://www.lockss.org/lockss/Home) -based system of servers to deposit their digital objects. If any particular copy of a digital object is compromised on an individual node, the other copies can overwrite it. Two aspects of the MetaArchive were interesting to us. First, the cost to deposit our digital data in the MetaArchive is only $200/year. Second, the MetaArchive Cooperative is interested in exporting its model to other groups, which has already been implemented for a state-wide digital preservation program in Alabama. Is this something PACSCL or PALCI would be interested in?
Next steps: we hope to build on the survey that was circulated across Haverford's campus, stressing the need not only to back-up critical digital data, but also to engage in best practices for long-term preservation, including providing counseling on practices (safety, security, longevity, breadth, authenticity, reporting) and prioritization analysis. This is all possible as long as there is institutional interest and commitment.
Diana Franzusoff Peterson and David Conners
Posted by Diana Franzusoff Peterson at November 27, 2007 10:05 AM
"Until Called For": Safekeeping Materials in Special Collections
Former Special Collections Executive Secretary & Research Assistant, J'aime Wells' article "'Until Called For': Safekeeping Materials in Special Collections" appears in the current issue of Haverford's College Information Resources Newsletter.
Posted by John Anderies at October 6, 2007 10:49 PM
Article by New Special Collections Librarian Published
David Conners, our new Digital Collections Librarian, has recently had an article published in Library Journal. Co-written with Laena McCarthy, Image Cataloger and Assistant Professor, Pratt Institute Libraries, the article "Can The Jobs Be Found," reconsiders the common presumption that entry-level jobs for recent library school graduates are hard to find.
Posted by John Anderies at September 4, 2007 04:53 PM
Welcome J'aime Wells
We're happy to announce that J'aime Wells has joined the staff of Special Collections as Executive Secretary & Research Assistant. J'aime recently completed her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Rutgers University and brings with her experience working in the acquisitions department of Rutgers University Press. Please welcome J'aime!
Posted by John Anderies at August 30, 2006 04:18 PM
Staff Changes: Comings and Goings
We bid a fond farewell to Joelle Bertolet who has retired this month from Special Collections as Executive Secretary & Research Assistant. Joelle is looking forward to visiting her children and grandchildren and is preparing to enter the Peace Corps in 2007.
In July, Karl-Rainer Blumenthal begins a one-year appointment as our Digital Archives Fellow. Karl is a 2006 graduate of Haverford College and worked in the Library and Special Collections while a student.
Posted by John Anderies at June 20, 2006 07:04 PM
Staff at conference for cultural heritage institutions
Special Collections staff Diana Franzusoff Peterson and John Anderies are attending WebWise 2006, a conference put on by the Institute for Museum and Library Studies, OCLC, and The Getty Trust in Los Angeles. The conference centers on innovative approaches to resource discovery and opening our collections to users via the online environment.
Posted by John Anderies at February 16, 2006 04:56 PM
Staff Attend Geo History Conference
Diana Franzusoff Peterson, College Archivist & Manuscripts Librarian, and John Anderies, Coordinator for Special & Digital Collections, will be attending the conference "Future Foundations: Mapping the Past - Building the Philadelphia GeoHistory Network" sponsored by the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, December 2-3, 2005.
Posted by John Anderies at December 1, 2005 08:15 PM
Benjamin Franklin: 300 Years Later and Still Current
Why, after 300 years, are Benjamin Franklin's insights and achievements still relevant to our times? Emma Lapsansky, curator of the Quaker Collection, and a panel of Franklin scholars will address this and other questions on a program on Wednesday, November 30, in The Montgomery Auditorium of the Free Library of Philadelphia.
Posted by John Anderies at November 19, 2005 01:03 PM
Lapsansky's Back to Africa published by Penn State
Back to Africa : Benjamin Coates and the colonization movement in America, 1848-1880, edited by Emma Lapsansky-Werner, Professor of History and Curator of the Quaker Collection, and Margaret Hope Bacon, noted Quaker author and former Haverford Gest Fellow, has recently been published by Penn State University Press. Back to Africa, which draws on the papers of Benjamin Coates from Haverford Special Collections, has been called "essential reading for every student of black studies, abolitionism, Quaker history, and nineteenth-century reform in general."
Posted by John Anderies at November 1, 2005 11:37 AM
Lapsansky published in Franklin collection
Benjamin Franklin : in search of a better world is the companion book of essays to accompany the Benjamin Franklin Tercentennary exhibition of the same name at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Included in the collection of essays is one by our own Emma Lapsansky, Curator of the Quaker Collection.
Posted by John Anderies at October 26, 2005 08:29 PM