The Digital Curation Centre and the Representation Information Registry/Repository

1. The Digital Curation Centre and the Representation Information Registry/Repository Maureen Pennock DCC, UKOLN CETIS MDR SIG, Bath, 28 June 2006

2. Today’s Talk • The Digital Curation Centre • DCC teams & work areas • Introduction to Representation Information • Overview & benefits of the DCC Representation Information Registry/ Repository (RIR)

3. Digital Curation • Digital curation, broadly interpreted, is about maintaining and adding value to a trusted body of digital information for current and future use • the active management and appraisal of data over the entire life-cycle

4. The Digital Curation Centre

5. The DCC • Launched in 2004 • Established to help solve the extensive challenges of digital preservation and curation, and to provide research, advice and support services to UK institutions • Consortium project – 4 partners • 4 main teams distributed across the 4 UK locations

6. Organisation to Engage & Collaborate communities of practice: users curation organisations eg DPC community support & outreach Collaborative Associates Network of Data Organisations service definition & delivery management & admin support research collaborators research development co-ordination testbeds& tools Industry standards bodies

7. DCC Outreach • Raising Awareness and Dissemination • Website (http://www.dcc.ac.uk ) • International Journal of Digital Curation • Annual International Conference • Understanding Users and their Needs • Requirement Gathering • Associates Network • DCC Forum

8. DCC Services • Information Services • Community-developed Digital Curation Manual • Briefing Papers & FAQ’s • Technology Watch, Standards Watch, Legal Watch • Case Studies • Best Practice Checklists • Advisory Services • Events: information days, workshops, training • Helpdesk • Audit and Certification Services

9. DCC Research • Annotation in Databases • Data archiving • Socio-economic and legal issues • Metadata extraction and curation • Ontologies and data dictionaries • Provenance and databases • Data transformation, integration and publishing • Supporting technologies • Networks of trusted digital repositories • Organisational and cultural challenges to digital curation

10. DCC Development • DCC Approach to Digital Curation (white paper) – sets out the path for development activities: • Monitoring international standards • Creating testbeds for digital curation tools • Development of recommendations for tools and methods for generating Representation Information • Development of a Representation Information Registry/Repository (DCC RIR)

11. Representation Information & the DCC Representation Information Repository/ Registry

12. Representation Information

13. DCC RIR • Representation Information Registry/Repository • An essential service for institutions managing an OAIS-type repository • Envisage network of RIR’s • Authoritative source of RI for a designated community • DCC prototype demonstrator: based on 2 key concepts to facilitate sharing of the curation effort • Descriptive ‘label’ (structural, semantic, other metadata) • Curation persistent ID

14. RI & RIR High-level view

15. RIR development as Registry • Interface and protocols – JAXR “standard” • freebXML implementation • many access methods • URL • Web Services • API • Etc.. • Findability • Persistent IDs • What can we rely on? • Labels (to support automated processing)

16. RIR development as Repository • Trusted repository of Rep. Info • Authenticity of information • Access control • Certificates/Digests • Extensibility • Distributed/Shared network

17. Shared RIR • Provides the building blocks for institutions to develop their own RI objects according to the types of data objects they hold • Reduces the effort each institution has to expend • Benefits all those involved in the life cycle of data objects • Data creators • Data curators • Data re-users

18. Benefits for creators & depositors • Helps content producers and depositors prepare materials for ingest by: • Increasing awareness • Facilitating selection process • Indicating types of RI to be submitted • Minimising required RI through cumulative deposits

19. Benefits for curators • Availability of a shared RIR offers a broad range of benefits for curators, centres, archives and libraries: • Cost reduction in running digital archive • Reduces and shares effort • Provides tools to work with RI • Increases range of formats an archive can curate • Extends time for which files can be useful • Encourages community building

20. Benefits for re-users • Availability of the RIR for third-party re-users: • Provides trusted, authoritative, secure RI • Allows users to rely on the authenticity and integrity of data sources • Extends community able to use digital material by enabling a large amount of RI to be searched and retrieved.

21. Future developments • RIR development activities tracked throughhttp://www.dcc.ac.uk • See also the dcc development wiki:http://dev.dcc.ac.uk/twiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome • CASPAR project http://www.casparpreserves.org • Research programme of the TFPARS

22. Further information • DCC development websitehttp://dev/dcc/ac/uk • DCC development listserv DCC-DEVELOPMENT@JISCMAIL.AC.UK • DCC websitehttp://www.dcc.ac.uk

23. Thank You Join the DCC Associates Network (it’s free!) http://www.dcc.ac.uk/associates/