New Custodians and New Practices Digital Curation for Family History Materials

1. New Custodians and New PracticesDigital Curation for Family History Materials IFLA-GENLOC Satellite Meeting,11 August 2011 Ross Harvey (Simmons College, Boston)

2. Introduction • The information diaspora requires new custodians of information - including individuals • Much of this information is in digital form - digitized and ‘born digital’ • Family history sources are increasingly digital • ‘Old-style’ preservation doesn’t work with digital information • Custodians (including individuals) need to adjust their preservation strategies

3. Topics • New thinking about preservation • Digital material at risk • Digital preservation: current best practice • An aside: where collections come from • Guidelines for small organizations and individuals • Where to go next • Conclusion

4. New thinking about preservation • Preservation is … • ‘concerned with maintaining or restoring access to artifacts, documents and records’ (SAA Glossary); ‘measures taken to extend the usable life of materials … to slow down the natural processes of deterioration of an object’ (Wikipedia) • Paper-based preservation thinking does not work with digital information because it: • Focuses attention on the carrier (the physical medium) • Emphasizes secure storage facilities, stable environmental conditions • This doesn’t address preservation issues of digital objects

5. Digital material at risk: why? • Obsolescence of computers and software • Vulnerability to corruption • Lack of knowledge about best practice • Insufficient resources allocated to digital preservation • Insufficient professionals with appropriate skills • Lack of knowledge about what the best organizational structures are

6. Questions for you • Do you back up your personal digital files? • Do you back them up according to a regular schedule? • Have you ever tried reinstating files from the backup? • How many copies of the backup files do you keep? • Where do you store them? • Have you ever had a hard disk crash? • When you upgrade to a new computer, operating system or software version, how do you make sure you can read your old digital files?

7. Questions for you • Backing up to a regular schedule / Checking that backups work / Keeping multiple copies in distributed storage • All of these are good practices for short-term storage • In libraries and archives, we are interested in • Long-term preservation and in ensuring the digital files can be used after time has passed – DIGITAL CURATION • This is much harder to do

8. What’s so hard about keeping digital materials? Quantities We create and handle lots of digital materials, e.g. • Files created in digitizing projects • Born-digital materials Internet-hosted materials Quantities extremely large BUT our procedures for archiving can currently handle only small quantities

9. What’s so hard about keeping digital materials? • The hardware changes fast Osborne portable computer 1981

10. What’s so hard about keeping digital materials? The storage media deteriorate fast and obsolescence gets in the way

11. What’s so hard about keeping digital materials? • The software changes fast • What is this? • How would you open it?

12. What’s so hard about keeping digital materials? • The file formats change fast • What is this? • How would you open it?

13. What’s so hard about keeping digital materials? Some of my old files: how to open them?

14. What’s so hard about keeping digital materials?

15. What’s so hard about keeping digital materials? And there’s more: • Technical • Lack of standards • Access barriers (e.g. encrypted files without the encryption keys) • Viruses • Non-technical – these are MAJOR • Funding is not sustained over time • Legal permissions • Inadequate knowledge and skills • Materials poorly identified and described

16. The inescapable conclusion • We can’t place digital objects on shelf and leave 100+ years – ongoing intervention is required “Preservation by digitization is precisely like running a glasshouse for plants where you have to provide water continuously, otherwise you will lose everything…This is why a … digitization [project] is so dangerous if the ‘watering’ for all eternity is not paid, nothing is preserved”(Source: http://www.fiji.gov.fj/publish/printer_5449.shtml) Broken link: a digital preservation issue

17. Digital preservation: current best practice • Will summarize current best practice in digital preservation • BUT this has been developed for use in large, well-resourced archives and libraries. • It doesn't scale down well to small libraries or archives, small collections, private information • What is this current best practice?

18. Current best practice: open data, open source, open everything • The open data movement • Open access • Open source

19. Current best practice: metadata • Standards: we need more • Better metadata • - Data capture • File formats • Metadata • Citation • Annotation • Representation • information • Data interoperability • Software integration

20. Current best practice: better understanding Better understanding of • The challenges • Best practice in digital archiving • Needed by information professionals (you!) • Needed by creators of digital materials (including the general public)

21. Current best practice: better tools • Better software tools for digital curation • Useful and usable

22. Current best practice: life-cycle responses • Develop responses that take account of the life-cycle of information DCC Curation Lifecycle Model Open Archival Information System Reference Model

23. Current best practice: different kinds of organizations • Develop organizational structures that respond to digital curation demands McGovern, Nancy (2007) ‘A Digital Decade: Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going in Digital Preservation?’RLG DigiNews v11 no1

24. Current best practice: new skillsets MLS or equivalent, plus other skills such as: • ‘Experience with XSLT, Perl or other scripting languages, and/or experience with major repository platforms’ • ‘Knowledge of XML ... Semantic web technologies … Experience with one or more metadata manipulation and scripting languages: XSLT, Java, Perl, Python, or PHP’

25. An aside: where collections come from • Role of the individual in collection building • Collector • Compiler • Creator  • Collections eventually come to the archive or library • Many collections will include digital objects • Photographs • Documents, spreadsheets • Databases • These digital objects are created by individuals • Creating 'good' digital objects is crucial for their long life

26. Guidelines for small organizations, individuals • Current best practice has been developed in large, well-resourced organizations • Can we translate them into guidelines that family history researchers, librarians, collections custodians and archivists in small organizations can apply? • Aim: to ensure digital materials are available for use in the future

27. Guidelines for small organizations, individuals General guidelines (National Library of Australia, 2009) • Refresh files (copy them to newer storage media) • Check that the data hasn’t changed by running integrity checks • Add metadata about the processes you apply • Keeping multiple copies of the file • Monitor developments in hardware, software, file formats and standards that will have high impact on digital preservation, and respond to them But these ‘simple’ guidelines are still complex

28. Guidelines for small organizations, individuals Creating ‘good’ digital files • Why? Preservation-friendly files are readable for longer; they are easier to preserve • Principles and practices: • Use open software if possible (eg OpenOffice not Microsoft Word) • Use open formats if possible (eg .CSV not .XLS) • Give files a unique name (eg ‘NZ_Family_History_Newsletter_no6_11June2009’ not ‘Newsletter6’) • Describe your files using metadata • Record details about the file (eg format, who created it, date)

29. Guidelines for small organizations, individuals Managing digital files • Why? To avoid obsolescence issues • Principles and practices: • Refresh files when needed (eg copy them to newer storage media) • Check files after copying to make sure they haven’t changed (eg try opening some of them) • Always keep one copy of the original file (eg and at least one other copy, preferably more) • Decide which files are most important (eg some may be duplicates)

30. Guidelines for small organizations, individuals Storing digital files • Why? To make sure there is an accessible, unchanged copy available • Principles and practices: • Keep several copies of the files (eg at least two copies, preferably more) • Store them in different physical locations (eg one at home, one at work) • Store them on different media (eg hard disk, CD/DVD, cloud storage)

31. Guidelines for small organizations, individuals Guidelines for preserving digital photographs • Identify where you have them stored • Decide which photos are most important • Organize the photos selected as important • Make copies and store them in different locations More about this at: http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/you/content/photos.html

32. Guidelines for small organizations, individuals Guidelines for designing preservable web sites • Follow accessibility standards (eg W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative) • Avoid proprietary formats (eg use HTML, CSS) • Maintain stable URLs (eg if changing URL, make sure there’s a redirect) • Design navigation carefully (eg include a sitemap) • Allow browsing of content, not just searching (this helps web harvesting software, eg Internet to capture all of the content) Source: http://blog.photography.si.edu/2011/08/02/five-tips-for-designing-preservable-websites/

33. Guidelines for small organizations, individuals Keep an eye on: • Digital Preservation in a Boxhttp://www.digitalpreservation.gov/register/7Outreach.pdf • Personal Archiving: Preserving Your Digital Memories http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/you/

38. Where to go next • For lots of good advice: European projects • DCC • Digital Preservation Europe • In the U.S. • NDIIPP (Library of Congress)

39. Where to go next • Cornell University’s online tutorial Digital Preservation http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/dpm/index.html • PARADIGM (Personal Archives Accessible in Digital Media) http://www.paradigm.ac.uk/

40. Conclusion • The need to preserve digital information is here – it won’t go away • It is worth putting effort into: • Creating ‘preservation-friendly’ digital objects • Managing, storing personal digital objects effectively • Advice is plentiful • Just do it! • It isn’t hard • But you have to be organized Email ross.harvey@simmons.edu Ross Harvey in his office, ca 1963