## Digital Preservation In Practice

Ed Fay London School of Economics EMAIL: e.fay@lse.ac.uk TWITTER: @digitalfay We do not have a long-term digital preservation strategy We do not have a long-term digital preservation strategy
…and we're perfectly ok with that!

This does mean….

That we are agnostic about the ‗final' solution
(We don't even necessarily think there is/has to be one…)
That we are happy to investigate, experiment and change what we are doing This doesn't mean…
We are doing nothing!

We have:
Decided we want to be preserving digital stuff We are:
Starting to take the first steps

## Long-Term Means Long-Term

- Digital preservation is about preserving 
access at a given point in time
- Right now we have no critical 
collections but, given time, we will

## Long-Term Means Long-Term

- We don't need:
•
a ‗complete solution'; right now
- We do need:
•
to start thinking, getting clear about the 
problem, and talking about it
- We also need to start doing something so it 
doesn't become too late

## Born-Digital Digital Archives Institutional Repository What Have We Done?

- Collections audit (a spreadsheet)
- Risk assessment (DRAMBORA) - …
- User requirements analysis (ongoing, 
for curators as well as end-users)

## Tools: Drambora

•
Risk assessment
•
Why?
•
Start the conversation
•
Make the problems clear to all stakeholders 
(curators, technical specialists, senior managers)
•
Not for detailed functional analysis
•
http://repositoryaudit.eu/

## What Are We Doing?

- Creating a place to store our digital objects
•
‗repository core' for object storage (redundancy, backups) and identification
- Creating a way to ingest/accession objects
•
workflow for object characterisation, checksums, quarantine/virus check

## Tools: Archivematica

•
Workflow tool
•
Why?
•
For ‗ingesting' digital objects
•
Bundles tools for:
•
quarantine/virus check (filesystem, ClamAV)
•
checksum creation/verification (MD5)
•
format characterisation/validation (FITS which packages DROID, JHOVE, NZ Metadata Extractor …)
•
http://archivematica.org/

## What Will We Be Doing?

- Building management interfaces
- Building access interfaces - Developing a logical preservation approach
•
strategy and policies
- Building logical preservation functionality
•
implementing tools for migration or emulation

## Lse Digital Library Lse Digital Library: Design Principles

- Flexible—we can hold a range of 
different types of digital collection
- Extensible—we can adapt to changing 
collections and user requirements
- Modular—we can replace components 
without disrupting other functions

## Tools

•
DRAMBORA
•
used for high-level risk assessment - as a tool for starting the conversation
•
Archivematica
•
used to characterise our collections and to assist in 
producing a more detailed risk profile for further analysis
•
Fedora/Hydra repository
•
will be used to store/manage all our digital collections
•
Planets/Plato
•
will(?) be used to help us plan our long-term strategy

## Guiding Principles

- Openness: standards, technologies
- Transparency: clear, documented 
decisions and processes
- Engagement: bringing everyone along 
with us (senior managers, depositors, 
colleagues across the library)
The **problems**…
…you've heard about The **solutions**…
…are complex Digital Preservation is HARD!

Digital Preservation is HARD!

## Oais Can Help

But it can also scare people!

Digital Preservation is HARD!

Shorter summary of DP: know what you have and value, assess risk, take action to avoid risk, repeat.

Problem: people don't do it Steve Hitchcock JISC KeepIt Project Manager http://twitter.com/#!/jisckeepit/status/25530206525591552

## Small Steps Now…

•
…save big(ger) problems later
•
Learn by doing - you (should) always have originals
•
Focus on:
•
―ingest‖ = capture, identify
•
―bit-preservation‖ = redundancy, backups
•
Use this as the basis for more thorough risk 
assessment
•
Use that as basis to make the case for investment
•
Then think about the long-term (policy and tech)
That's it!

Ed Fay London School of Economics EMAIL: e.fay@lse.ac.uk TWITTER: @digitalfay