# Presentation: 898921

## Setting the Federal Stage: Developing a National Digital Information Infrastructure for Preservation  

- Martha Anderson
- FLICC/CENDI Symposium
- December 11, 2001

***Time and accident are committing daily havoc on the originals deposited in our public offices. ... The lost cannot be recovered; but let us save what remains; not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use, in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.***
- --Thomas Jefferson to Ebenezer Hazard, February 18, 1791

**Notes:**
In the winter of 1791, Thomas Jefferson wrote to Ebenezer Hazard, a former Post Master General and historian about his view of the preservation of cultural heritage documents. (He was referring to government documents from New England colonies that Hazard had let him borrow to read.)  From the letter, we have a distinct impression that access to documents was the key to preservation, as well as multiple copies. Making copies is an ancient form of preserving information.  We are gathered today at this symposium to better understand the nature of preservation in an age of bits and bytes rather than parchment and ink.

## The Challenge

- Libraries and archives must ensure access to digital collections in an environment of exponential growth and volatile technology.

**Notes:**
As individuals, we have experienced our own loss of access to documents of our own creation. How many here created documents in WordStar? It was the best selling word processor in the 1980s. How many can read those WordStar documents today? Libraries and archives are dealing with many materials from diverse creators in a technology market that is driven by the principle of upgrade yearly or at least every two years. It is driven by the ever new and better solution.

## Background

**May 1996 – Commission on Preservation and Access and The Research Libraries Group published *****Preserving Digital Information.***
**July 2000** – **National Academy of Science published** ***LC21: A Digital Strategy for the Library of Congress. ***
**December 2000** - **Congress provided a special appropriation for development of National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation (NDIIP) program.  **

**Notes:**
December 1994, The Commission on Preservation and Access and the Researcg Libraryies Group created the Task Force on Digital Archiving. Charged to “frame the key problems (organizational, technological, legal, economic) that need to e resolved for technology refreshing...protection against both media deterioration and technological obsolescence
The Task Force envisioned the development of a national system of digital archives...collectively responsible for the long-term accessibility of the nation’s social, economic, cultural, and intellectual heritage instantiated in digital form.”
In July 2000 the NAS report stated that the LC was in danger of becoming a book museum unless it invented a new form for acquiring and preserving materials that include digital information in all its forms,  opened itself to broader and deeper dialogue with the world of information professionals beyond its walls and invested in the technology infrastructure required to support such changes.
In December of 2000, Senator Stevens requested  information from LC and National Archives regarding work on digital preservation. Key to the questions were the issue of cooperative work of common benefit.
In December, the appropriations bill legislated the NDIIP with specific requirements for inter-agency collaboration and public and private sector cooperation to meet the challenges for the preservation of digital materials within a national context.

## National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIP)

- Part of Consolidated Appropriations Act Fy2001
- Federal partners jointly assess planning considerations
- Strategy to be executed in cooperation with library, creative, publishing, technology, and copyright communities nationally and internationally

## NDIIP Strategic Planning

- Library of Congress to develop and execute Congressionally-approved strategic plan ($25 million total)
- Initial planning
- Acquisition and preservation of digital information that might otherwise “be uncollectible”
- Federal funding available for matching by non-federal donations, including in-kind contributions, through March 31, 2003 ($75 million)

***Digital preservation raises issues that cannot be addressed fully within the walls of any one institution****.*
- 						--LC21, July 2000

## Joint and Participating Partners

- Federal and private, libraries and archives, research and business organizations
- Expertise in telecommunications and e-commerce policy and practices
- Expertise in collection and maintenance of archives of digital materials
- Involved in efforts to preserve, collect and disseminate digital information

## Opportunities for Partnerships

- Promote development of solutions for digital libraries and archives
- Exploit infrastructure technologies being developed for e-commerce and e-government
- Pursue value from existing research partnerships
- Develop standards and best practices
- Cooperate with a variety of communities with related interests

## NDIIP Timeline: 2001

- Assemble National Digital Strategy Advisory Board
- Convene communities of stakeholders
- Establish management structure
- Establish digital strategy framework

## The Process

- Stakeholder Meetings
- Collaborative Research
- Conceptual Framework
- Scenario Planning
- Models and Strategy
- Plan

## The Process

**Collaborative**** ****Research**

**Conceptual Framework**

**Scenario Planning**

**Stakeholder Meetings**

**Models &**
** ****Strategy**

**Plan**

**The Process**

***Preserving information in digital forms is much more difficult than preserving information in forms such as paper and film. This is not only a problem for traditional archives, but also for many organizations that have never thought of themselves as performing an archival function.***
- 		--Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Draft, July 2001

## Stakeholder Communities  

- Media/Entertainment
- Print publishers
- University/research scholars
- University/research libraries
- Preservation agencies
- Creators
- Users
- Government agencies

**Notes:**
Sony, AOL/Time Warner, Motion Picture Association, ABC News, Public broadcasting, Newseum, Randomw House, elsevier, Washington Post, American Association of publishers, e-book publishers, Princeton, University of S. California, Duke University, Carnegie-Mellon, RLG, OCLC, individual creators, users represented by FutureFocus 2020, NLM, Copyright office, Smithsonian, Commerce, NSF, NAL, NIST

## NDIIP Timeline: 2002

- Submit proposed plan for Congressional approval
- Recommend approaches to developing partnerships
- Establish partnerships and begin major projects
- Begin modeling and testing preservation framework with partners

## Collaborative Research  

**Process**
- NSF-sponsored workshop on long-term preservation of digital objects (Spring 2002)
- Broad participation of federal agencies in needs statement
**Outcomes**
- Call for proposals (Fall 2002)
- Funding partnerships
- Research results (3 to 5 years out)

**Notes:**
Some of the initial challenges identified in two meetings that included representatives from the National Libraries-LC, NLM and NAL-the National Archives, National Institute of Standards and Technology, National Endowment for the Humanities, Institute of Museum and Library Services, GPO, CENDI, and the Digital Library Federation were Components of a national infrastructure (technology, policies, economic models, roles and responsibilities
Preservation technologies and tools (repository architecture, web harvesting, authentication, large-scale backup and recovery)
Access and use of preserved digital information (attributes of preserved objects, interoperatiblity, digital library services)
And basic computer science issues (algorithms for proving authenticity, techniques for normalizing heterogeneous digital objects) 
Goal of the NSF workshop is to produce a compelling research agenda that a variety of government agencies will be willing to support and to attract researchers from academia, government and industry.

## Conceptual Framework

**Process**
- Survey digital preservation efforts nationally and internationally
- Assess current state and use of technologies
**Purpose**
- Establish framework for discussions and decisions
- Clarify areas of responsibility and relative roles
- Support planning and funding initiatives
- Promote understanding of NDIIP activities

**Notes:**
Office of Assoc. Librarian for Strategic Initiatives at LC has contract with Price Waterhouse Coopers to conduct research and prepare a conceptual framework documents.  

## NDIIP Timeline: 2003

- Achieve goal of matching $75 million
- Evaluate work to date and provide long-term recommendations to Congress for 2003 and beyond

***Long-term preservation of digital information on a scale adequate for the demands of future research and scholarship will require a deep infrastructure capable of supporting a distributed system of digital archives.***
- 		--*Preserving Digital Information*, Task Force on Archiving of Digital Information, May 1, 1996

## National Infrastructure Planning  

- Cooperative, networked, distributed
- Roles and responsibilities
- Legal issues
- Preservation and access
- Economic models
- User community
- Technical solutions

**Notes:**
Overarching issues to be examined within the context of a cooperative, networked, distributed environment. 
Intellectual property rights, Define what is preserved, by whom and to what level? Balance preservation and access – locked archives not desirable but unlimited access may not be practical either. Economics of sustainability—Who pays? Taxpayers? Donors? Users? Combinations? Who will use these preserved objects?It may be more a question of sociology and economics rather than technology.  To paraphrase Brewster Kahle speaking at the Digital Libraries conference, May all the issues be technological.  

- The NDIIP is developing a  framework for national information infrastructure for preservation of digital materials through a network of partners in library and publishing communities, federal agencies and private-sector business organizations.

**Notes:**
As diverse communities come together to plan and understand the challenges of digital preservation, a common language becomes a requirement. More and more communities are turning to the OAIS as a framework for forging cooperative activities across disciplines and interests. The OAIS concept of a designated community helps articulate similarity and difference. Both must be recognized for a successful accomplishment of such a large goal.