Digital Preservation Strategies for Indian Libraries
Joint Secretary Parliament of India, Lok Sabha Secretariat New Delhi 110001 [email protected]
Dr. Ravinder Kumar Chadha
Digital Preservation
The librarian are concerned about preservation ever since inception of the libraries. Traditionally, preserving things meant keeping them unchanged; digital environment has fundamentally changed the concept of preservation without modifications, accessing the information will be very difficult
Digital Preservation
Current Contents on Disc (CCOD) on 5 inch floppy discs in mid-1980s. Books accompanied with 5 / 3 floppy discs. 5 floppies and drives are obsolete CD ROMs, once respected for its longitivity, are known to dysfunction much faster than expected. CD ROM may be phased out completely in favour of its more evolved avatar, i.e. DVD ROM with greater storage capacity. In-house databases: CDS / ISIS to Winisis to WWW ISIS / Web ISIS
Digital Preservation
unique challenges: due to basic nature of digital data
machine-readable, not eye-readable
Digital Preservation: Definition
The term digital preservation refers to preservation of materials that are created originally in digital form and never existed in print or analogue form (also called born-digital) as well as those converted from legacy documents and artifacts (printed documents, pictures, photographs or physical objects) into images using scanners, digital cameras, or other imaging technologies for access and preservation purposes.
Why Digital Preservation?
Long-term preservation of digital information is plagued by:
Short media life
Obsolete hardware and software
Slow read times of old media Defunct Web sites
Challenges for Preserving Digital Contents
Dynamic Nature of Digital Contents Machine Dependency Fragility of the Media Technological Obsolescence Shorter Life Span of Digital Media Formats and Styles Copyright and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Issues
Principles of Preservation as Applied to Digital Preservation
The basic principles of preservation that are being practiced for preservation of analogue media are also applicable to preservation in the digital world:
Longitivity Selection Quality Integrity Access
Information Density V/s Life Expectancy of Storage Media
Digital Preservation Strategies
Multiple strategy, however no single strategy is appropriate for all data types, situations, or institutions. These strategies are: Bit-stream Copying
Known as backing up data; making an exact duplicate of a digital object. Remote storage guard against disastrous event. Minimum maintenance strategy for even the most lightly valued, ephemeral data. Not a long-term preservation strategy.
Refreshing
copying digital information from one long-term storage medium to another with no change in the bit-stream Addresses both decay and obsolescence issues related to the storage media. Does not address the issue of obsolescence of encoding and formatting schemes. Longitivity of media does not guarantee availability of hardware / software required to read the stored format. Backward compatibility and interoperability are serious threat to longevity of digital information.
Technology Preservation
Also called the computer museum solution. Rely on preserving the computer, operating systems, original application software, media drives, etc.
Applicable for neglected digital objects.
Assumes that media has not decayed beyond readability.
Limitation: No obsolete technology can be kept functional indefinitely. Requires a considerable investment in
Digital Archaeology
Rescue content from damaged media or from damaged hardware and software
An emergency recovery strategy involves specialized techniques to recover data from unreadable media, either due to physical damage or hardware failure. Carried out by data recovery companies Given enough resources, readable bit-streams can often be recovered even from heavily damaged media (especially magnetic media)
Analogue Backups
Combines the conversion of digital objects into analogue form, e.g., taking high-quality printouts or the creation of microfilm. An analogue copy of a digital object can, in some respects, preserve its content and protect it from obsolescence. Technique makes sense for documents whose contents merit the highest level of redundancy and protection from loss.
Migration
Periodic transfer of digital materials from one hardware / software configuration to another, or from one generation of computer technology to a subsequent generations.
Migration may include conversion of data to avoid obsolescence not only of the physical storage medium, but of the encoding and format of the data. Digital objects will have to be constantly migrated and converted to new formats, computing devices, storage media and software to ensure they are not left behind on obsolete system.
Replication
Replication is used to represent multiple digital preservation strategies. Bit-stream copying is a form of replication. LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe) is a consortial form of replication, while peer-to-peer data trading is an open, free-market form of replication. Objective is to enhance the longevity of digital documents while maintaining their authenticity and integrity through copying and the use of multiple storage locations.
Reliance on Standards
Advocates use of well-recognized standards and discarding proprietary or less-supported standards. Backward compatibility for older formats would maintained if it is widely used as a standard. For example, if JPEG2000 becomes a widely adopted standard, the sheer volume of users will guarantee that software to encode, decode, and render JPEG2000 images will be upgraded to meet the demands of new operating systems, CPUs, etc.
Emulation
Emulation uses a special type of software, called an emulator, to translate instructions from original software to execute on new platforms.
Eliminate the need to keep old hardware working.
Emulation requires the creation of emulator programs that translate code and instructions from one computing environment so it can be properly executed in another.
Encapsulation
Technique of grouping together digital objects and metadata necessary to provide access to that object.
The grouping process lessens the possibility that any critical component necessary to decode and render a digital object will be lost. Appropriate types of metadata to encapsulate with a digital object include reference, representation, provenance, fixity and context information. Encapsulation is considered a key element of emulation.
Strategies for Indian Libraries
GOI should formulate a National Digital Preservation Policy In India digital preservation will need to be a distributed responsibility as enormous amount of digital material being produced by a large number of organisations To set-up National Centre for Digital Preservation (NCDP)
National Centre for Digital Preservation
To coordinate with existing and potential digital archives around the country and provide coordinating services for better preservation of digital data. To initiate national debate on setting up of advance digital archives, particularly with respect to removing legal and economic barriers to preservation.
Role of NCDP
To recommend archival application of technologies and services To develop national information infrastructure to ensure that longevity of digital information is an explicit goal. To prepare of a white paper on the legal and institutional foundations needed for the development National Depository of digital data.
Role of NCDP
To create subject digital repositories. To examine test and implement emerging standards and tools regarding formats, hardware/software, security, access rights management To act as national agency for coordinating digital preservation initiatives in the country and also coordinate with other countries.
Role of NCDP
To identify current best practices and to benchmark such practices for being used in the country.
The design of systems that facilitate archiving at the creation stage. Storage of massive quantities of culturally valuable digital information Requirements and standards for describing and managing digital information Migration paths for digital preservation of culturally valuable digital information
GOI initiatives
MIT has set-up a Working group of the Stake-holders First meeting held in April 2008 Five sub-groups were setup to submit reports in Six months Hardly any progress so far MIT is ready to sponsor the projects
