The Information Manager Vol.

9 (1)2009

Beyond Digitization: Access and Preservation

By
GBAJE Ezra Shiloba and BOT N.G

Abstract
This paper is a desk study that examines issues around and beyond digitization within the context of Nigeria. The
paper focuses on access and preservation as some of the main objectives of digitization. It indentifies Institutional
Repositories (IR) as panacea to achieving these aims. The enabling technologies and challenges for the deployment
of IR are also discussed. The need for the libraries to form a consortium to share cost of infrastructures and ICT
skilled personnel for the successful deployment of IR is recommended.

Introduction Similarly, majority of the universities in Nigeria run

More and more information are created in digital different postgraduate programs and as a requirement
format ranging from, public records, engineering the postgraduate students are expected to conduct a
design, legal documents, records of financial study and submit their findings in form of theses and
transactions, examination records, and scholarly dissertations. These constitute a very large portion of
works amongst others. The 21st century has seen the digital assets that need to be disseminated and
explosion of digital materials in Nigeria, resulting preserve for future generations.
from the use of computers and Internet in many
organizations especially universities, research Statement of Problem
institutions, the business sector, and many Current investment in the creation of digital asset and
government institutions. While new information is digitization is threatened by the rapid change in
created in digital form daily, many organizations are computer software and hardware technologies
making efforts to digitize their non-digital born thereby jeopardizing the objectives of digitization.
materials to digital format. Digitization involves the Unless significant effort is put into digital
process of making non-digitally created materials preservation to secure long-term access to these
available in digital format. Eadie (2005), describes digital assets we stand to lose our entire digital asset.
digitization as the process of making an electronic Studies by Lawrence (2000), Granger (2002),
version of a 'real world' object or event, enabling the Macdonald and Lord (2003), Rosenthal, et.al (2005)
object to be stored, displayed and manipulated on a and Gladney (2007) have revealed that digital objects
computer, and disseminated over networks and/or the will cease to be accessible without active
World Wide Web. The physical or analogue object is management and intervention. These make a clear
'captured' by some device such as a scanner, digital understanding of the preservation and access issues
camera or recorder, which converts the analogue surrounding digital assets imperative to help relevant
features of the object to numerical values, enabling stakeholders take timely and informed decisions for
them to be 'read' electronically. In other words, the the sustainability of digital asset.
digital object can only be a version of the real thing
being digitized. The researchers has also observed that many
digitization project in Nigeria has failed to adopt
According to the Nigerian Universities Commission appropriate software that facilitate remote access,
website, Nigerian Board of Technical Education and collection of appropriate metadata for each digital
Nigerian Commission for Colleges of Education, asset, feature that will index, sort and make retrieval
there are 92 Universities, 100 polytechnics, 63 of digital asset easy.
colleges of education respectively. There are also
many research institutions in Nigeria. Scholars and Objective of the study
researchers in these institutions generate large The objectives of this study are:
volume of data and knowledge as part of the criteria i. To highlight the vulnerability of digital
for their promotion. Their findings are normally resources and strategies for digital
published in scholarly journals, many of whom are preservation.
circulated in only print format. Scholarly publications ii. To highlight the role of Institutional
of scholars and researchers in Nigeria are of great Repositories in digital preservation and access
importance to solving local and regional problems as
well as contributing to the body of knowledge, hence Threats to Digital assets
the need for wider dissemination and preservation for Digital assets either digital born or digitized are
the future generation to build on. stored and preserved on storage media. The most

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 The Information Manager Vol.9 (1)2009

popular digital storage mediums available today the body of knowledge is perceived to be relatively
include, hard drive, optical storage media (CD- higher than that of Nigeria. By digitizing and
ROMs, DVD, Magnetic tapes), and zip drive. These allowing digital access to their scholarly works,
storage medium are vulnerable to deterioration in Nigerian scholars will improve the visibility of their
addition to the problem of obsolescence in retrieval work locally and globally.
and playback technologies. Beagrie (2004), and
Rosenthal (2005), over the years have identified the It has also been argued that digitization is sometimes
following as major threats to digital information: aimed at digital preservation which is to ensure that
i. Storage medium deteriorate overtime; digital information remains readable and useable in
ii. the hardware that reads particular carriers the future. However, digital preservation goes beyond
wears out and cannot be replaced when it saving digital asset on storage medium, deliberate
has become obsolete; actions must be taken to maintain digital asset with a
iii. file formats become obsolete in the course view to ensuring continued accessibility over long-
of software evolution, as backward term. Long-term in this context is referred to mean
compatibility is lost over a succession of long enough to be concerned with the impact of
versions; changing technologies - and should include
iv. older versions of software, even when these timescales of decades and even centuries. The Joint
are available, may not work on new Information Systems Committee (JISC) digital
hardware or operating systems. preservation briefing paper defined digital
preservation as “the series of actions and
Valuable digital assets of institutions are at risk of interventions required to ensure continued and
being inaccessible in the short-term as well as long- reliable access to authentic digital objects for as long
term as a result of these threats. These inaccessible as they are deemed to be of value”. In general, digital
digital assets may contain highly crucial data and preservation involves a number of organised tasks
information. associated with a variety of technical approaches or
strategies for ensuring that digital resources are not
The success of preserving digital materials for long- only stored appropriately, but also adequately
term also requires standards for file formats. maintained and thus consistently useable over time.
Common examples of this include Tagged Image File
Format (TIFF) or JPEG2000 for images and WAV or There are essentially three possible strategies for
MPEG for audio file. Dahl, Banerjee and Spalti, digital preservation which include technology
(2006) assert that non-proprietary standard file preservation, technology emulation and data
format maximize the use of digital content and migration. The first strategy is the preservation of the
greatly simply migration to new file formats and new original technology used to create the digital asset in
generations of computer technology order to preserve the functionality and "look and feel"
of the product. This is a "museum style" approach
Digital Access and Preservation which is probably only suitable as a short-term
The primary purpose of digitization is to improve solution. Hardware and software from the object
access to digital resources. Remote access is itself are maintained so that access can be guaranteed.
essentially very important to disseminating digital However, over a number of years degradation of the
asset widely without any geographical limitation. hardware makes this approach problematic as a long-
Apart from providing remote access digitization term strategy.
produce digital surrogate of rare or fragile material
which reduces damages associated with the frequent Technology Emulation is based on the need to
physical handling of the original material. The preserve the technological environment and therefore
volume of digital asset created requires that original functionality. Unlike technology
appropriate digitization software that will allow preservation, an emulation strategy seeks to preserve
information provider enter all the appropriate that environment not through the preservation of
metadata for easy accessibility is required. original hardware/software but by using current
technology to mimic the original environment. This
According to Hussein and Priestley(2002) there are might involve emulation of the original software or
at least 400–500 scholarly journals published (more likely) emulation of the original hardware (in
throughout Africa the largest proportion emanating this case the original software and operating system
from South Africa and Nigeria. However because are stored along with the digital object itself). Either
South Africa has long embrace digital publishing the way, the strategy relies on a detailed description of
visibility of their scholarly work and contribution to

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 The Information Manager Vol.9 (1)2009

the original environment on which to base the become obsolete. They are now being created to
emulation in future. manage, preserve, and maintain the digital assets,
intellectual output and histories of institutions. This is
Data migration focuses on maintaining digital because it provides a good platform for ingest of
material in current formats. The attraction of this different types of digital asset with their metadata,
strategy is that material is maintained in an accessible ability to index documents, features for easy
format. Data migration means the material is searching, retrieving and long-term preservation
maintained in the archive in a currently useable among others.
format. As digital collections increase in size, the
process of migration may become extremely time Institutional repositories may be limited to a field of
consuming and costly, and it could become an almost discipline, an institution, or a consortium of several
continuous process. Granger (2000) points out that institutions. Governments and government agencies
migration is currently the only practical strategy open may use digital repositories to store and preserved
to large-scale digital archives. Choice of strategy their digital assets such as white papers, policy
must reflect fitness for purpose. Certain technical documents and other relevant documents. Wilczek
factors will impact on this choice: the basic data and Glick (2006) assert that preservation system
types employed in each category; the application requires natural and juridical people, institutions,
programs used to create them; the structures applied applications, infrastructure and procedures. The
to them; the systems used to manage or distribute organization of the IR together with the commitment
them prior to deposit. of the sponsoring institution will provide greater
assurance than just uploading onto a web server with
Role of Institutional Repository in Digital unknown support and commitment to preservation.
preservation and Remote Access Libraries are already taking leadership roles in
An Institutional repository (IR) is a set of services planning and building digital repositories, fulfilling
that an institution offers to the members of its their roles as experts in collecting, describing,
community for the management and dissemination of preserving, and providing stewardship for documents
digital materials created by the institution and its and digital information. Wheatley (2004) asserts that
community members. Westrienen and Lynch (2005) digital repository like DSpace have been design to
assert that IR is most essentially an organizational achieve the following in long term:
commitment to the stewardship of these digital i. Data can be maintained in the repository
materials, including long-term preservation and without being damaged, lost or maliciously
facilitating access to digital asset. IR can be used to altered.
collect, preserve and provide free, unrestricted access ii. Data can be found, extracted from the
to all types of institutional digital asset. Most IRs are archive and served to a user
designed to accept and facilitate access to all forms of iii. Data can be interpreted and understood by
digital asset including text, images, video and audio the user in the face of hardware and software
files and ensure their availability to future obsolescence.
generations in its original digital form.
Achieving digital preservation process requires that a
Institutional repository systems are Open Archives digital repository to have these functions and
Initiative for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) infrastructure:
compliant. OAI-PHM is a lightweight protocol i. A process of ingest that creates or extracts the
enabling access to web accessible material from metadata necessary to ensure preservation.
repositories interoperable for metadata sharing, ii. A framework, within which the required
publishing and archiving. It also helps facilitate Representation Information can be stored,
access via multiple search engines and other managed and utilized (a Representation
discovery tools. This simplicity lowers the barrier to System).
repository operation for many institutions, as it only iii. A process of "technology watch" which
requires a file system to hold the content and the monitors technology dependencies and the
ability to create and share metadata with external recorded Representation Information, and
systems (Johnson, 2002). takes action to ensure continued preservation
where technology obsolescence occurs.
Institutional repositories particularly DSpace iv. A process of rendering (displaying or making
provides a set of tools for helping institutions keep sense of) retrieved digital objects.
track of their data, organize it in meaningful ways v. A process and related framework for recording
and migrate that data to new formats as old ones change metadata

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 The Information Manager Vol.9 (1)2009

Recommendations
Enabling technology for deploying IR Nigerian researchers, librarians, digital
Key to the deployment and implementation of curators and archivists need to sensitize all the
Institutional Repositories (IRs) are the basic National relevant stakeholders involved in creating valuable
Information Infrastructure (NII) which includes; digital asset of the impending threats to digital asset
telecommunication, electricity, web technology and help mitigate against it. National strategies and
skilled, ability to set up and maintain a web server policies need be developed to encourage the adoption
and information technology skilled man power. Open of digital institutional repository like Dspace that
source software for building and deploying IR facilitate access and digital preservation of the ever
programs such as E-print, DSpace, FEDEORA, ETD- growing digital assets generated in our various
db run on a web server platform. Even thought open institutions.
source solution requires no licensing fee and is
available on the Internet free, the major drawback is The scarcity of web technology skilled librarians
that, it is not free from requiring human expertise and make its necessary for institutions that want to adopt
web technology skill sets to install, configure and and deploy IR to collaborate with the ICT unit of
customize. Gbaje (2007), Ashcroft and Watts C. their parent institution. While institutions with
(2004), posit that Nigeria has an acute shortage of similarly mission can come together and set up an IR
web technology and Information and Communication thereby sharing the human and technological
Technology (ICT) skilled librarians to deploy basic infrastructures.
ICT projects in the library.
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