Digital Collection and Preservation issues

[Roy Tennant]

I have been pondering digital preservation issues for a while, mainly in 
relation to a combined Collection Development and Preservation Policy 
that I was developing for the Berkeley Digital Library SunSITE. I am now 
ready to share my work and get additional input. The policy can be viewed at:

http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Admin/collection.html

The current draft reflects input from the appropriate policy group of our
library, as well as individual staff members. The full implementation of
the policy will include replacing my generic graphic bullets next to links
with bullets identifying the particular collecting/preservation level of
that item (and linking to the document that describes that level). These 
bullets have not yet been fully implemented, but to get an idea of how 
they look and work, go to:

http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Web/

If you are interested in digital preservation issues, then I urge you to
retrieve and read the document announced in the following press release. I
have not yet finished reading it (having begun it today on my lunch
break), but it is an interesting (not dry!), informative, and thoughtful
document on some very tough issues that all library Web managers should 
consider.
Roy Tennant


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              REPORT PUBLISHED ON PRESERVING DIGITAL DATA

            CPA and RLG make findings and recommendations of
                      task force widely available

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., June 4, 1996--What is necessary to make virtual
libraries on the Internet meet criteria for stable, accessible
collections? What should be done to ensure digital information's
validity and useability far into the future, as it becomes the medium of
both choice and necessity?

The Task Force on Archiving of Digital Information, a 21-member, broadly
based group that included specialists in publishing, information
technology, and library and archival administration, as well as
representatives of legal, governmental, and museum communities, has just
completed a year-long exploration of these issues and released its final
report.

Among the group's conclusions: a distributed infrastructure, such as a
national system of digital archives (and possibly of data migration and
reformatting centers), is needed to collect digital information
resources, protect their integrity, and retain them for future use.
Interested stakeholders need to come together without further delay to
undertake cooperative projects in creating the components of a
successful network of digital archives, to develop standards and
policies, and in particular to address the legal and economic barriers
to preserving digital information -- intellectual property rights and
the costs of storage and continued access.

In the 64-page report, the task force provides a careful analysis of the
nature of "information objects in the digital landscape" that can serve
as a tutorial on the issues involved in preserving the content, fixity,
reference, provenance, and context of digital files. The report also
offers preliminary models for the costs of storage and access under
different scenarios.

The report concludes with a set of action recommendations to the task
force's cosponsors, the Commission on Preservation and Access (CPA) and
the Research Libraries Group (RLG). These recommendations also speak to
other organizations with a stake in the long-term preservation of
digital information and the public interest.

"This is a substantive, thoughtful report, not without some
controversial principles and assumptions," said James Michalko,
president of RLG. "RLG is already conducting work on several of the task
force's nine recommendations, and we will be following up on others with
other stakeholders. Two contexts in which we're addressing data
preservation issues are Arches, our archival server project, and RLG's
first coordinated, digital collections project, Studies in Scarlet."

Deanna Marcum, president of the Commission on Preservation and Access
and Council on Library Resources, stated: "This report addresses many of
the questions librarians and archivists have asked about the
preservation of digital information, and we are most grateful to the
task force. Now practical and, no doubt, difficult decisions must be
made by the institutions working on digital library projects. The
Commission intends to continue its role as catalyst by supporting some
research and demonstration projects to help answer specific questions
about economics and migration strategies."

The report is available in a choice of electronic formats from RLG's
World Wide Web home page: http://www.rlg.org. Copies of the printed,
bound report can be ordered from CPA by enclosing prepayment ($15.00 per
copy) to:

   The Commission on Preservation and Access
   1400 16th Street, NW, Suite 740
   Washington, DC 20036-2217

In addition to making the report available on its Web site, RLG is
mailing the CPA's printed version to its members and program
participants.

                         *       *       *

Members of the Task Force on Archiving of Digital Information:

Co-Chairs: Donald Waters, Yale University
           John Garrett, CyberVillages Corporation

Pamela Q. C. Andre, National Agricultural Library
Howard Besser, University of Michigan School of Information
Nancy Elkington, The Research Libraries Group, Inc.
Henry Gladney, IBM Almaden Research Center
Margaret Hedstrom, University of Michigan School of Information
Peter B. Hirtle, National Archives at College Park
Karen Hunter, Elsevier Science
Robert Kelly, American Physical Society
Diane Kresh, Library of Congress
Michael E. Lesk, Bell Communications Research
Mary Berghaus Levering, U.S. Copyright Office
Wendy Lougee, University of Michigan
Clifford Lynch, University of California System
Carol Mandel, Columbia University
Stephen P. Mooney, Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.
Ann Okerson, Yale University
James G. Neal, Johns Hopkins University
Susan Rosenblatt, University of California, Berkeley
Stuart Weibel, OCLC, Inc.

                         *       *       *

The Research Libraries Group, Inc. (RLG) is a not-for-profit membership
corporation of universities, archives, historical societies, national
libraries, and other institutions devoted to improving access to
information that supports research and learning. RLG owns and operates
databases and software to serve the information access and management
needs of both its members and non-member institutions and individuals
worldwide.

The Commission on Preservation and Access (CPA) is a private, nonprofit
organization acting on behalf of the nation's libraries, archives, and
universities to develop and encourage collaborative strategies for
preserving and providing access to the accumulated human record.

                                 (end)