Representatives from workshop co-organizer the Dutch KB, from the left: Marcel Ras, Trudie Stoutjesdijk, Barbara Sierman, Els van Eijck van Heslinga

Barbara Sierman stressed that policies are by no means just “paper work”:

Clear and express policies are very beneficial to an organization, Barbara Sierman went on, because they ensure consistency and sustainability in managing your digital collections. They make an organization less vulnerable when there are staff and management changes, they enable the transfer of knowledge, they enable education programmes, they harmonize activities and they bring clarity in responsibilities. Clear policies also equip libraries better in their dialogues with third parties, e.g., when outsourcing, when participating in digitization projects, when working with partners, etc.

Barbara Sierman stressed that policies are not just something for management. Instead, the entire organization should be involved and policies should be implemented into the work flows, so that they can inform large-scale, automated preservation actions. It is very important that you publish your policies, in order that the entire stakeholder community around you (users, suppliers, funders) knows exactly what you mean to deliver and for whom.

If, after all this, you still doubt the usefulness of policies, research in the PLANETS project showed that organizations with preservation policies generally have a higher level of accomplishment in preservation. And if you do not know where to start, check out Barbara’s slides with helpful resources.

In order to develop policies, but also to become a trusted partner yourself, every institution that serves researchers has to have skills and knowledge about digital curation issues. Not necessarily every last detail, but enough to be able to define your requirements for outsourced work and to assess the results of any partnerships. Joy Davidson of the UK Digital Curation Centre (picture above) talked about cooperation within the organization, about the challenges for support staff and about the skills required to help researchers manage their research data (her slides are full of information; they shall be up soon at the workshop website). The DCC approach is practical rather than theoretical:

Joy Davidson emphasized that it is not the technical skills that are the most important. Rather, the key skill for everybody involved in data management is the ability to communicate:

Lastly, Chiara Cirinnà of the Fondazione Rinascimento Digitale provided an overview of the APARSEN project, which intends to establish a Network of Excellence in Europe on questions of digital preservation. The project’s objective is “to encourage the development of a well connected and highly skilled generation of professional leaders”. Well, all I can say is that we certainly need those!

In conclusion:

Organizational, not technical issues are key

In stressing the need for communication skills, Joy Davidson agreed with quite a few preceding speakers that it is not the technical issues that are key to successful curation and partnering for curation. Organizational issues, changing cultures in organizations, finding common ground between institutions that have different traditions – those issues are much more difficult and time consuming to deal with than technical issues. We do have technical issues, of course, and these must be worked on, but they can always be solved, agreed Bram van der Werf of the Open Planets Foundation, established to further develop the tools and services from the Planets project. “Software always breaks down,” said van der Werf, “and you must have IT staff to mend the systems – be it in-house or shared.

Van der Werf spoke about two models for partnerships, entrepreneurial/business partnerships and institutional partnerships. The first category is more sustainable, argued van der Werf, because there is no political scrutiny. Nevertheless, institutional partnerships are needed for data that are “abandoned” by the commercial world.

Matt Kibble of sponsor ProQuest argued that it is, indeed possible to serve both "God and Mammon" (as in this Florentine manuscript) in a public-private partnership for digitization, Early European Books Online

To illustrate some organizational issues and the need for partnering and cooperation, Giovanni Bergamin of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze spoke about the Magazzini Digitali  project in Italy. The three (!) national libraries of Italy and the Fondazione Rinascimento Digitale are now building a digital repository for publications (see slides). Quite an adventure, with so many parties involved. The Fondazione Rinascimento Digitale, who co-organized this workshop with the Dutch KB and LIBER, plays a vital role in the project.

Giovanni Bergamin (left) with workshop host Maurizio Lunghi of the Fondazione Rinascimento Digitale

PS: An informative overview of digital curation practices and outlooks in research libraries in the US is New Roles for New Times: Digital Curation for Preservation, by Tyler Walters and Katherine Skinner, Association of Research Libraries, Washington, DC, March 2011.

Goodbye, Florence, for now. An inspiring place to hold a conference!

Ivan Boserup (left) with Chiara Cirinnà, organizer of the event for the Fondazione Rinascimento Digitale

To me the most interesting feature of this project is that a library takes the bold decision to start capturing e-mail content without all the organizational and technical issues surrounding e-mail having been solved. And there are many unresolved issues, as was clearly demonstrated by the many questions the audience fired at Boserup after his presentation.

The Danish KB realized that in the digital age an important source of information, personal correspondences by important Danes, threatened to get lost, as e-mails are frequently deleted and post-mortem donation is often not possible because the computers are lost. So a plan was devised to capture e-mails at the source:

More pens and paper than laptops at this workshop, because there was no wifi ...

Eric T. Meyer of the Oxford Internet Institute (right) with William Kilbride (DPC, left) and Randy Kiefer (CLOCKSS)

Meyer spoke from the perspective of a researcher who is not getting what he needs from current web archives. The InternetArchive and various national libraries are capturing static websites, more or less as pictures, but the huge amounts of data that are exchanged through new social media consist of interactive, dynamic content that is very difficult to harvest. To illustrate this, Meyer showed a graphic illustration of a simple Facebook transaction (click on image to enlarge it).

What makes harvesting complicated is the fact that there is no one manifestation of the content – every user sees his own personal website. Technically, libraries are still unable to archive all this in a manner that can be useful to researchers. The Mellon Foundation recently awarded the LOCKSS consortium a research grant to start looking into these mechanisms, but it will be some time before such research yields practical results.

Meyer stressed that not even researchers are fully aware of the wealth of information on the web and on all social media that are replacing the web. Just imagine what sociologists could do if they were able to monitor web traffic itself or if psychologists were to gain access to all the transactional data going on in gaming.

Eric T. Meyer frustrated by present restrictions on access to (legal deposit) web archives (on-site access only): "Come on, this is just NOT how researchers work!"

Is there a role for research libraries in all of this? “Libraries have become very successful at disappearing into the background”, Meyer observed. “They should get their stuff much more to the front.” This requires active and early participation by users; the researchers are essential partners in this. And it requires domain expertise.

Meyer’s recommendations for dealing with the Web in a Changing World:

• Immediate: Set up ways for researchers to trigger collection, increased frequency of crawls, etc.
• Developing: Use triggers, like RSS, to find and archive changing content, particularly emerging fast-changing content.
• Long-term: Develop algorithms that follow trends to trigger archiving.

Meyer also stressed: “There is a change from looking at past pages, to looking at collections, and collections of collections. There is a shift towards data analysis rather than reference; the data set rather than a reference collection; e-research, data sharing, linked data, API’s.” If you want to know more, check out Meyer’s slides and the recent reports mentioned therein.

To my mind, all of this implies a drastic change for research libraries – from looking at and selecting traces from the past to looking at a live, constantly changing environment, and picking and choosing content to preserve and provide access to long before it has proven its value to research. This will require fundamentally different selection techniques, as will be discussed in my next post from the LIBER workshop.

Shifting focus from past to present, from static to dynamic content (slide: Eric T. Meyer)

Reactions from the audience included a comment by William Kilbride (DPC): “I think in 10 or 20 years mainstream digital preservation will be about web archiving. That worries me.”

Barbara Sierman of the KB found out at last week’s meeting of the International Internet Preservation Coalition in Washington that many researchers do their own bit of web archiving. Unfortunately, these collections are not shared.

Eric Meyer’s concluding comment: “More and more of what we do is happening on the web.”

William Kilbride (middle) speaking with Joy Davidson (DCC) and Bram van der Werf (Open Planets Foundation)

First of all, Kilbride and Beagrie acknowledged that outsourcing digital preservation is important for libraries, because most of them simply to not have the resources or the skills to do it themselves. Then they took a look at what it means to be a trusted partner, more from an organizational viewpoint than a technical one (for a technical viewpoint see my 2011 post about David Giaretta’s work). Kilbride and Beagrie interviewed four e-archiving initiatives (CLOCKSS, Portico, the KB e-Depot and the UK LOCKSS alliance) and concluded that:

This all sounds very well, but what does it mean? Portico was the first archive to agree that “trust in preservation needs a lot more work”. Meanwhile, the four archives had quite a list of requirements which they feel they must fulfil:

• Portico: Clear mission and clarity of purpose; knowledge of content and who owns it; transparency of functions including audit; examples and responses to emerging situations; commitment and capacity for research; skills and skill development; global reach with partners.
• CLOCKSS/LOCKSS: all of the above PLUS transparent infrastructure; open source tools; community ownership; clarity on rights.
• KB e-Depot: all of the above PLUS credibility of mandate; understanding relationship/differences between access and preservation, subscribers’rights and public rights.

Looking at these lists, one can conclude that the archives at least know what they should be doing. As to whether they deliver already – that is yet to be seen.

Kilbride and Beagrie identified the following challenges:

• From reading to text mining
• Data and dynamic publications
• What is the final copy of an article: publisher or author?
• No one teaches this stuff at Library School
• No recognised audit authority
• Fixity and provenance versus dynamic, collaborative content
• Access and preservation are conflated
• Access library versus research library
• Harder to preserve OA content than paid-for content
• Risks uneven across large to small publisher spectrum.

Concluding:

The DPC will publish a full report on e-journal content in its Technology Watch Reports Series in July 2012. Sounds like a must-read!

A part of the audience; at the front LIBER President Paul Ayris

 ”When it comes to cloud storage and preservation – we have not seen cloud interoperability yet.” (William Kilbride)

“It seems that providing for training in digital preservation is risky businesss – there is little money available to send staff to those training events.” (William Kilbride)

Randy Kiefer (CLOCKSS, left) and Marcel Ras (KB e-Depot) announcing intensified collaboration between different e-journal archives

As it now seems, the danger of a turf war has been averted. Instead, a British initiative by EDINA (sponsored by JISC), in collaboration with the ISSN International Centre in Paris, has brought the present archiving solutions together to establish a Keepers Registry which is to keep track of what is being archived where and to inform libraries accordingly. More on the Keepers Registry in Joy Davidson’s slides from a separate presentation on the Registry. Marcel Ras also indicated that the Registry is to “facilitate exchanges of knowledge and expertise between the archives.”

In a world where e-journals are no longer sold to libraries but rather access to publishers’ data bases is licensed, archiving e-journals at central locations saves individual publishers the cost of preservation systems. For libraries there are two risks that need to be managed: a) a system breakdown at the publisher’s; b) access to content after the subscription has been cancelled. The first risk is being managed by the e-journal archives; whether post-cancellation access is also part of the deal must be negotiated in special contracts, says Marcel Ras. He announced that as of 2014 the KB e-Depot will set up a tripartite system for Europe, whereby both publishers and libraries will contribute to the maintenance of the digital archives, thus saving individual publishers and libraries the cost of long-term preservation.

But which initiative should a library join, one wonders. Randy Kiefer provided a nuanced answer to this question: “Let’s be honest, there is no silver bullet, there is no single archiving solution. Therefore, I suggest that you support as many solutions as you can.” In fact, the large publishers do support different e-journal archives. But how about the smaller libraries and publishers? The next day William Kilbride of the UK Digital Preservation Coalition indicated that especially small publishers still run many risks as they do not have the resources to join the archives. Marcel Ras suggested that this too could be solved: “When we conclude an archiving agreement with a library, we will approach the publishers not yet covered by our present arrangements and try to work with them to include them.” Kiefer: “Libraries should start working their contributions towards long-term preservation into their budgets.”

Maria Cassalla of Turin asking what we know about the costs of digital archiving. The answer: too little ...

The audience had quite a few questions for Marcel Ras and Randy Kiefer. Kiefer was questioned about the CLOCKSS method, derived from the LOCKSS technology, to preserve different copies of the content in their original file format. While the system does check the different copies against each other to be able to repair a broken file, there are no strategies to migrate or preserve the content in the long term. Kiefer: “So far we have always been able to render the content in the browser with at most a few just-in-time translation actions. But I do not expect that this solution will work for fifty years or more. That is why LOCKSS has been awarded a Mellon Foundation grant to look into long-term access to the content we now archive.”

Another question concerned the research data that are increasingly being attached to e-journals. Have CLOCKSS or the KB e-Depot developed methods to preserve those as well? Ras: “So far the quantities are small. But we hope that the technologies we are developing for the KB web archive will help us solve these issues. In addition, we are working with the Dutch data archive DANS to look at possible solutions.” Kiefer expects “major changes in the next three to five years to bring journals and research data together.” He referred to figshare as one of those developments, without as yet commenting on how CLOCKSS would tackle such research output. But figshare has joined the CLOCKSS network recently, which bides well for the future.

On LOCKSS vs CLOCKSS. LOCKSS is a network in which content is replicated between participating libraries as a strategy to ensure long-term access. LOCKSS is format agnostic, meaning the content will be kept as it was received and output from digitization projects can also be archived. It is an open network that provides both access in case of a trigger event and post-cancellation access. CLOCKSS is a closed (private) LOCKSS network that works with the same technology, but acts as a dark archive for publishers’ content. For more information, see the respective websites.

Gianluca D’Amato described how LOCKSS and CLOCKSS partnerships are emerging in Italy. The slides he prepared with Tommaso Giordano of the European University Institute in Florence can be found here.

Gianluca D'Amato of the Universita Cattolica del Sacro Suore Milan

Ours was a charming historical venue near the old Duomo, where the Florentine sun did its best to interfere with powerpoint technology

Not surprisingly, research data played a prominent role. Many libraries are turning to research data as a new opportunity to serve the university community in a digital age where the local physical availability of books and journals, which was the very reason for building libraries in the first place, has lost much of its importance. But is that same local focus perhaps a hindrance when it comes to research data?

Very early in the workshop, Liz Lyon of UKOLN (a UK-based research organisation for digital libraries) and the DCC (Digital Curation Centre, also from the UK) addressed the role libraries play with regard to research data. Her focus was on partnerships in the information chain, between creators and custodians of research data. By all means, read all of here slides (published here) for a complete picture.

Liz Lyon: "Dramatic changes are needed if libraries are to grow into trusted partners for research data."

Liz pointed to the many discipline-based research infrastructures that are emerging all over the place (as did Norbert Lossau, by the way, in a recent article in LIBER Quarterly). Research libraries do not seem to play much of a role in these. Why is that? Because of their local rather than disciplinary orientation? Liz Lyon cited her own article on roles and responsibilities with regard to research data in the current issue of the International Journal of Digital Curation. A survey showed that researchers expect “leadership” from research librarians, because, as Liz said, “Researchers do not know what is good practice with regard to their data”. Another study (Re-skilling for research, by RLUK/Mary Auckland), however, showed a disturbing lack of appropriate skills among research libraries, and, what is worse,the gap between the skills needed and the skills available in research libraries is growing at an alarming rate. The slide below shows not only the statistics but also the types of skill required:

The audience in Florence reacted audibly when this slide was shown. The implicit question was: Can we ever bridge that gap? The RLUK study itself provides an explanation for the skills gap that is not very encouraging: “Very few librarians are likely to have specialist scientific or medical knowledge – if you train as a research scientist or a medic, you probably won’t become a librarian.” Now who can argue with that?

So, I could not help but wonder and ask out loud: “Are we perhaps trying to transform an institution that is fundamentally local and general (the traditional library) quite forcibly into something it is not, a specialized global service?” Liz’s response: “I see a blended landscape emerging. We are still unpacking as to what data to keep where. Some disciplines have developed very good data curation facilities. To researchers in those fields I would say: ‘By all means, take your data to the disciplinary archive.’ But for many data such services are not available. Also, data need to be managed during the research process, and there I see a role for research libraries. But dramatic changes are needed if research libraries are to play that role effectively, dramatic changes with regards to skills in research libraries.” “Dramatic?”, I asked. “Yes, dramatic changes,” Liz confirmed. “Research libraries must make sure to link with the global context to create an integrated research landscape.”

On a more positive note, Liz Lyon referred to many tools that the UK Digital Curation Centre is developing to help research libraries (see the slides). The UK is very active in this field, that is certainly true, not in the least because UK research funders are growing more demanding with regard to data management and data sharing. All of Europe can benefit from what the UK DCC (and other UK institutions, such as RIN) are turning out in terms of research and tools for managing research data. But the question how to organize all of those new skills and how to fund them in times of budget cuts remains unanswered. Perhaps LIBER can take a role here, Liz Lyon suggested.

Our host Maurizio Lunghi suggested that we should build a basic global service with a specific mandate which would be available to all. When he suggested this, I thought of Liz Lyon saying: “I want to emphasize most of all that research data comes in all types and sizes, there are many, many differences.” Can these all be served by a global service, I wonder?

A unique shot of our most charming host and workshop chair Maurizio Lunghi of the Fondazione Rinascimento Digitale - his was a truly Italian, "relaxed" mode of time management, leaving lots of room for informal networking and ...

... truly excellent Italian catering!

PS: on definitions. “Digital curation involves maintaining, preserving and adding value to digital [assets] throughout their lifecycle” (DCC website). Digital curation, therefore, is more than digital preservation. Liz Lyon: “Curation is more geared towards immediate use; preservation more towards future use.”

 (Series of posts to be continued …)

Today we are talking about research libraries and digital assets, not from a technical perspective, but rather an organizational one. As many research libraries will be too small to really provide digital curation and preservation all by themselves, this workshop looks at partnerships – those between custodian organizations sharing the burden of curation (e.g., KB e-depot, Portico, LOCKSS, CLOCKSS), and also partnerships within the information chain (between creators and custodians of digital information).

As the requirements for different types of digital assets vary, so do possible partnerships, and LIBER has invited a number of experts to speak on specific partnerships: Marcel Ras of the KB, Randy Kiefer of CLOCKSS, Gianluca D’Amato and Tommaso Giordano of LOCKSS initiatives in Italy.

From my introductory presentation "Setting the Scene"

Equally important are partnerships within the information lifecycle – especially those with producers of content. The digital age has brought new types of content of interest to researchers and students, such as research data and websites The question at this workshop will be what role there is for research libraries in these information chains, and how roles and responsibilities are to be divided, as they are not self-evident at all:

Curation involves more parties than ever before and their roles and responsibilities have become quite fuzzy in the digital age

As is evident from this slide, there are many questions to the experts speaking at this workshop. These include Liz Lyon on research data and Eric Meyer on websites. Let’s hope they will supply the answers and I get to pass them on to you!

Will research libraries turn into an expensive internet node for e-journals? A quiet zone? A student cafe? With books as mere wallpaper? (Introduction by yours truly; at right Maurizio Lunghi, workshop chair)

(That’s all for now; there is no wifi at the venue and the one in my charming Bed & Breakfast [must keep down expenses] seems reticent to get used to the digital age. But don’t worry – you will learn all in due course.

Firenze - few places in the world harbour more physical beauty

The impressive Piazza del Duomo - only a stone's throw away from our venue

View from our venue - a combination of historical inspiration and daily reality

Related posts: reports from the first LIBER curation workshop in 2009.

There still are a few places left, see the website: http://www.rinascimento-digitale.it/liber2012-internationalworkshop.phtml.

They say Florence in May is beautiful …

Foto: KB Optische Technieken, Jos Uljee

De opkomst was indrukwekkend. Meer dan 160 aanmeldingen, zo’n 140 echte bezoekers – dat betekent dat het onderwerp leeft. In gesprekken ontdekte ik wel dat de verwachtingen heel verschillend waren. Nog altijd komen er mensen naar deze bijeenkomsten die hopen dat de NCDD een kant-en-klare oplossing heeft liggen, en als wij dan zeggen dat wij die niet hebben, sterker nog, dat die er domweg niet zijn, dan zijn ze teleurgesteld.  Begrijpelijk natuurlijk. We moeten met zijn allen nog steeds wennen aan een digitale wereld die zo snel verandert dat je – als publieke organisatie met beperkte middelen – altijd het gevoel houdt dat je achter de feiten aan blijft hollen. Toch is dat zo en blijft dat zo.

Foto KB Optische Technieken, Jos Uljee

“Het “Huis voor ons digitaal geheugen” moet je niet te letterlijk nemen. Zelf denk ik eerder aan het grote trappenhuis uit Hogwarts (Harry Potter); zwevende trappen die bewegen en steeds nieuwe verbindingen maken; schilderijen die leven en meepraten, een soort crowd-sourcing avant-la-lettre. Alleen hebben wij geen toverstokjes.” (IA)

In de discussies viel me op dat met name de kleine instellingen vragen om regels, om vastigheid. “Vertel ons nu maar gewoon wat we moeten doen.” En: “De NCDD mag best wat feller worden, wat meer regels opleggen.” Bij degenen die die regels zouden moeten opleggen, zeg maar de grote instellingen die al flink gevorderd zijn met duurzame toegankelijkheid, bespeur ik terughoudendheid om adviezen te geven, omdat ze zelf nog niet weten wat die adviezen op de lange termijn waard zijn. Dit is een nieuw vak en er zijn nog veel onzekerheden. De technologie zet ons iedere dag voor nieuwe uitdagingen, en de IT-wereld kan nauwelijks langer dan vijf jaar vooruitdenken. Dat maakt de ervaren instellingen voorzichtig, omdat ze geen fouten willen maken, geen claims aan hun broek willen als iets niet blijkt te werken. Dat is ook begrijpelijk.

Dagvoorzitter Karin van der Heiden en NCDD-voorzitter Bas Savenije over het onderling uitwisselen van back-ups tussen KB en Beeld en Geluid. "Dat zouden meer instellingen moeten doen."

Tijdens een parallelsessie van de werkgroep Opslag gooide Martin Berendse van het Nationaal Archief een stevige knuppel in het hoenderhok. “Wie van ons kan nu zeggen dat hij zijn IT-beheer helemaal op orde heeft?” Van de vijftig paar handen gingen er twee omhoog …

Parallelsessie opslag: "Misschien moet NCDD een soort opslagmakelaar worden, tussen wie ruimte overheeft en wie ruimte nodig heeft."

Dit alles was misschien niet prettig, maar wel nuttig. Het is heel belangrijk dat we allemaal begrijpen in wat voor wereld we zijn beland, zodat we onze verwachtingen bijstellen en wennen aan het feit dat er domweg geen garanties zijn.

Zonder garanties kun je ook aan de slag

Als we met zijn allen geaccepteerd hebben dat we aan het pionieren zijn en dat er nog geen garanties zijn, dan kunnen we eindelijk echt aan het werk.

De werkgroep Preservation buigt zich over prangende vragen uit het publiek. Vlnr Mette van Essen (NA), Jeanine Tieleman (DEN), Barbara Sierman (KB) en Robert Gillesse (DEN).

Barbara Sierman van de KB deed een praktische suggestie: misschien hebben we nog geen “best practices”, maar we kunnen wel laten zien wat we doen en waarom we dat doen. Zet een paar van die aanpakken naast elkaar en je hebt een wereld aan informatie voor instellingen die keuzes moeten maken. Want het is natuurlijk ook niet zo dat we niets weten. Kom nou, we weten best al veel; Nederland blaast een behoorlijke partij mee in de internationale context.

Het feit dat er maar twee handen omhoog gingen na de vraag van Martin Berendse werd ook wel weer genuanceerd tijdens de koffiepauze. “Alles op orde?, nee, dat durven we niet te zeggen, maar we zijn al wel een eind op weg.”

Tijdens de discussie: werkgroepvoorzitters Jeffrey van der Hoeven (links, Opslag) en Giovanna Fossati (Preservation)

Ik kijk altijd graag naar duurzame toegankelijkheid als een kwestie van risico’s managen. En dan kan iedere stap, hoe basaal ook, de risico’s die je collecties lopen weer een stuk beperken, een merkbare bijdrage leveren. Soms kan die bijdrage zelfs bestaan uit het accepteren van bepaalde risico’s omdat je hebt besloten dat een bepaalde collectie niet zo belangrijk is voor je organisatie, of omdat je in geval van nood een document opnieuw zou kunnen digitaliseren. Als je zoiets gericht besluit, dan hoef je daar tenminste niet meer over wakker te liggen en hou je energie en middelen over om de echte risico’s te lijf te gaan.

foto KB Optische Technieken, Jos Uljee

Sleutelfunctie: kennis

Bij het managen van risico’s is er een sleutelrol voor kennis. Kennis over wat er mogelijk is en wat niet, kennis over hoe de taken verdeeld zijn, kennis over hoe je beleid ten aanzien van digitaal materiaal op kunt bouwen, welke keuzes je daarbij kunt en moet maken, kennis over welke aanbieders er zijn en wat ze aanbieden. Als je dat in huis hebt, ben je al een flink eind op weg. Maar die kennis is gefragmenteerd en lastig te vinden. Daarom liep ik al een hele tijd rond met ideeën voor een NCDD kenniscentrum. Niet om overnieuw te doen wat elders al is verzameld, maar om het bij elkaar te brengen, verbindingen te leggen.

Foto KB Optische Technieken, Jos Uljee

Maar je aarzelt wel even als je zoiets op je neemt. Een kenniscentrum lanceren is geen kunst, maar het onderhoud kost heel veel energie. En hoe bouw je het zo op dat mensen er echt iets aan hebben? Ik kon het toch niet laten. In de kerstvakantie heb ik samen met Bert Bulder, mijn webmaster, met heel goedkope technische middelen een structuur opgezet. Dit project was eigenlijk nog lang niet rijp om te presenteren. De werkgroepen hadden alleen nog een paar screenshots gezien en het bestuur van de NCDD had nog helemaal niets gezien. Maar omdat er dinsdag zoveel vraag was naar kennis en verbinding, heb ik besloten het prototype aan de zaal te laten zien. En er werd heel enthousiast gereageerd, hoe onaf het werk ook is. Petra Links van NIOD twitterde: “Het wordt toch steeds concreter: online kennisbank, makelaarsbank voor storage, do’s and don’ts, #joepie!”.

Nadat ik de demoversie had laten zien zei dagvoorzitter Karin van der Heiden per ongeluk dat de site vanaf woensdag live zou zijn. Toen moest ik ingrijpen en vertellen dat het nog een demoversie was. Maar de zaal nam daar geen genoegen mee. “Niet wachten tot alles af is!” was de stemming in de zaal, gewoon live zetten. Ter plekke gingen de aanwezige bestuursleden om. “Zet maar live.” Mooi was dat – en echt, dit was allemaal niet gepland. Dit is toch het resultaat van de creatieve energie die ontstaat als je een groep mensen die allemaal eigenlijk hetzelfde willen in een ruimte zet.

Het couveusekindje heeft nog veel zorg nodig

We hebben nu dus een online kenniscentrum, maar het is nog wel een couveusekindje, de geboortekaartjes laat ik nog even in de kast. Het grote voordeel van de structuur is dat iedereen (ja, ook jij en u!) mee kan bouwen aan de informatie. Iedere pagina heeft een reactieveld. En ik hoop zo dat jullie dat gaan doen, je kennis delen. Mij op mijn vingers tikken als ik iets schrijf dat niet deugt. Wees ook niet bevreesd om verschillende invalshoeken te laten zien, zoals Barbara suggereerde. Niet opleggen, wel laten zien dat er verschillende meningen zijn. Bijvoorbeeld: het LOCKSS netwerk kiest ervoor om de bits op te slaan, maar niets te migreren naar standaarden [met uitleg waarom en bronnen]; de KB en bijvoorbeeld het Nationaal Archief van Denemarken zijn een andere mening toegedaan [met uitleg waarom en bronnen].

Ook heel belangrijk: probeer vooral links aan te dragen naar relevante informatie elders. We gaan hier niet het wiel opnieuw uitvinden, we gaan bestaande wielen zo veel mogelijk verbinden.

Infrastructuur a la NCDD: beleid, opslag, software, richtlijnen, geld, kennis, en mensen, mensen, mensen

De tussenstand van de infrastructuur

De NCDD bouwt aan een infrastructuur (kennis, mensen, faciliteiten, diensten, geld) voor de publieke sector en het symposium liet de tussentijdse resultaten zien van twee werkgroepen, opslag en duurzaam beheer/preservation (zie powerpointdia’s hier). De parallelsessies hebben de NCDD een schat aan informatie opgeleverd over hoe we bepaalde zaken moeten bijsturen. De taakafbakening tussen opslag enerzijds en duurzaam beheer/preservation lijkt nog niet goed genoeg te zijn. Daar gaan we in het bestuur over praten. Ik bespeurde ook een flinke behoefte onder vooral kleine instellingen aan kant-en-klare oplossingen die ze met weinig menskracht kunnen implementeren. De werkgroep Preservation sprak van “hulp bij implementatie”, maar misschien moet dat veel verder gaan, moeten het kant-en-klare diensten zijn, in IT-termen digital reservation as a service (DPaS?). Beeld en Geluid heeft zo’n aanpak enkele jaren geleden gepionierd met ProArchive. Toen is het niet helemaal gelukt om dat levensvatbaar te maken. Maar ik denk dat de richting wel klopte. Ook dat gaan we bespreken.

Ik heb dinsdag ten slotte contact gelegd met een kleine instelling die misschien als proefkonijn gaat fungeren. Om het allemaal heel concreet en praktisch te maken en de werkgroepen de verleiden tot uitvoerbare oplossingen. We zijn nog in overleg, dus ik noem nog even geen namen, maar het zou een geweldig project kunnen worden waar we allemaal van kunnen leren.

Kortom: met het laatste plaatje uit mijn eigen presentatie afgelopen dinsdag: Werk aan de winkel!

Voor wie de WOB-discussie tussen Ingmar Koch en de KB heeft gevolgd: Ingmar en Bas Savenije raakten geanimeerd in gesprek tijdens de NCDD-dag.

De presentaties van de dag staan hier.

Andere blogs over deze dag en/of de nationale infrastructuur:

• Fred van Kan
• Tom Kuipers
• Ingmar Koch
• Petra Links en Edwin Klijn

Tweets: #hvog.

David Giaretta himself came forth at the conference to present a European framework project which is building a three-tiered approach to certification of trusted digital repositories for digital preservation: from the light-weight instrument Data Seal of Approval (which was developed separately by the Dutch DANS archive), on to self-assessment and ending in a fully-fledged third-party audit based on ISO standards.

The European certification framework

But the question remains: what can you measure objectively? Giaretta’s approach revolves around metadata: each digital object must contain enough representation information (information about everything you need to use the object: hardware, software and, e.g., vocabularies) to enable the designated community (the clients) to use the information (see OAIS for terminology). In principle, Giaretta said, this is testable. I have described Giaretta’s work on representation information in more depth here and here.

David "have you read my book" Giaretta

The next question that drew some comments from the audience is: who is doing the testing? How can the system ensure consistency? Giaretta pleaded the establishment of formal training and national accreditation boards. US consultant Bob “mister” Rogers added from an IT perspective that prospective auditors will need much more than knowledge of OAIS and representation information. They must know a lot about security issues and IT operations.

Bob "mister" Rogers

Need for a holistic approach

Rogers referred to a number of instruments that have been developed in the IT industry to take stock of cyber risks and assess the quality of systems (check out his slides when they become available. But, he warned, IT is only a part of the picture. “We need a holistic approach,” he stressed, that includes people and processes. The website www.datalossdb.org reveals, in Rogers’ words, “a staggering amount of data loss”. And, in case you wonder: intentional or unintentional mistakes by people are the most important cause of data loss:

slide Bob Rogers

Recurring conference theme: it’s people that make the difference

So, how do you audit people, I wonder. Remember Tom Cramer at bootcamp? It is all about the mindset, not about diplomas.

Bob Rogers gave the audience some insights into his consultancy practice during bootcamp. He stressed how important it is to talk with all of the stakeholders. Typically, records managers (and I would imagine librarians) want a thousand classifications; the IT folks will want everything to be nice and simple so it can be efficient; and the lawyers? They won’t tell you what they want – because lawyers are always vague about everything. In Rogers’ view, collaboration is the key – plus (of course!) an excellent consultant who asks the embarrassing questions.

“Ah, but does he get honest answers?” I asked Bob later. “Don’t most consultants write down what the customer wants to hear?” You can imagine what Bob’s answer was: a good consultant will be able to wriggle some change into politically correct language.

Measuring for improvement: the Digital Preservation Capability Maturity Model

At the end of the session, consultant Charles M. Dollar and his colleague Lori J. Ashley brought measuring to the next level: as a means to facilitate improvement. Interestingly, in the context of a conference about IT and digital preservation, Charles Dollar used a well-known IT model (CMMI), combined it with digital preservation standards such as OAIS (post to come) and TRAC (Trusted Repositories Audit and Certification), and built a “Digital Preservation Capability Maturity Model” (DPCCM), in other words: it measures how preservation-ready organizations are.

As a couple of Dutch organizations have been doing some work with the model in the Netherlands, it was a special pleasure for me to hear Charles and Lori talk about their approach during a 7 AM breakfast session. “Records managers,” Lori told me, “are overwhelmed by digital preservation. They simply don’t know where to start.”

Charles Dollar (left) and Lori Ashley of the Digital Preservation Capability Maturity Model

The DPCMM breaks up digital preservation into clearly defined components and scores them on a scale from 0 (nothing) to 5 (excellent):

The Dollar model (click to enlarge)

The resulting scores can then inspire prioritization and a roadmap for improvement:

“But how do you know where to begin?” I asked Lori, as that is a question that had come up in the Netherlands. Lori explained to me that that is where the consultant comes in. Through interviews he/she gets an acute sense of where something is glaringly missing and where the best opportunities for improvement can be found. A five-year improvement plan can then be drafted.

And if an organization scores zeros all around or is overwhelmed by the model itself? “Even that is alright, because many are in the same boat,” says Lori. “The model is about hope, even if it’s baby steps. The important thing is to leverage people’s passion about their organization.”