DIGITAL PRESERVATION a How-To Guide for Beginners
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DIGITAL PRESERVATION A How-To Guide for Beginners PREPARE. PRESERVE. PROGRESS. Contentsal preservation is a very hot topic in the world of 03 Introduction 04 What will you learn from this eBook? 05 Who is this eBook aimed at? 06 What is digital preservation? 09 How do you know if you need digital preservation? 11 How do you get on the digital preservation ladder? 12 What does a basic digital preservation system look like? 16 Cloud or on-premise? 17 Where next: Other components of a digital preservation system 18 How much is it going to cost? 19 Case Study - New York’s Museum of Modern Art 21 Where to go to get more info? 22 Key Takeaways 23 eBook Checklist 24 Contact Us 25 Acknowledgements / 2 Introduction Digital preservation is a very hot topic in the world of heritage, culture and memory institutions. Many people are talking about it and some organisations have a strategy in place and are in the process of digitally preserving their assets in some shape or form. There are however a large number of people who are just starting out and who are trying to get to grips with the basics of digital preservation. These people, and you might be one of them, are asking themselves “what exactly is digital preservation?” and “where do I start?” and “what do I need to do to be able to say that I’m on the digital preservation ladder?” - and many more questions besides. This eBook will answer these and other questions and will serve as a jumping-off point in helping you to define the digital preservation system that meets your needs. This eBook is undeniably about the basics of digital preservation and keeps its feet firmly on the ground in focusing on the (very few) fundamental building blocks you need. Arkivum/Perpetua, a fully hosted, long-term digital preservation and archiving service, fulfils all the requirements of a basic digital preservation solution and is used to illustrate the concepts explored in the eBook. 40 year-old 16mm film of a flooded gas pump that has recently been restored in Nashville. © 2016 Memories to DVD / 3 What will you learn from this eBook? If you’ve got this far, you very likely want some help on getting the basics of digital preservation in place. We’ll start out by reiterating who the book is aimed at and by defining what we mean by digital preservation and describing what kind of digital preservation the book is going to focus on - just so we’re all on the same page. The book will then ask how you’ll know if you need digital preservation and what to do if you do (how to get on the first rung of the digital preservation ladder). We’ll then take you through what the basic building blocks of a digital preservation system look like and what their key characteristics are. And finally, we’ll take you through a Case Study from New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and then point you at some other resources that you might find useful. And if that wasn’t enough, there’s a checklist to assess your readiness and preparedness to get on that all-important first rung of the digital preservation ladder. / 4 What about digitisation? Digitisation is the digital preservation enabler for physical assets. It is the Who is this eBook aimed at? existence of digitisation technology that drives the possibilities of digital Anyone tasked with preserving digital assets for the long-term preservation. It is the process of converting analog assets (paintings, but doesn’t really know where to start, or anyone who would like paper documents, film, audio, to validate that they are on the right road and heading in the right photographic prints and negatives, direction. Or indeed anyone looking for information on how to physical objects etc) into a digital bridge the gap between the digitising of physical assets and the form either through direct conversion (converting a 16mm file to an MP4 file ability to access, trust and use the resulting digital files at some for example) or ‘recording’ a physical point in the future. The value and purpose of digital preservation object through the use of digital lies in bridging this gap and making it possible. photographs for example. Digital preservation processes can, of course, also be applied to digital assets that were born digital. These could be, for example, digitally recorded audio, electronic documents etc. Don’t forget that getting digitisation right is really rather important - the digitisation process creates the raw £2m material that you will be working with in your digital preservation workflow. The amount of the Heritage Lottery Fund that You’ll need to start with a the Tate Archives and Access digitisation strategy. project is supported by. / 5 What is digital preservation? Simply put, it’s the process of managing and storing digital assets (image files, audio files, video files, text files etc) and their associated metadata in such a way that they are guaranteed to be accessible, available and usable in the future, whenever that is. Thinking very long-term is key here - decades and (way) beyond. The combined complexity of achieving these goals lies at the heart of successfully executing a digital preservation strategy. It’s important to remember that digital preservation is as much about preserving the meaning and context of the asset as it is about preserving the asset itself. It is therefore important to preserve, alongside the digital asset, metadata about the digital asset and that of the original object (if the digital asset was not born-digital but is a digitisation of something physical / analogue). The digital assets you’re preserving could be born-digital or they could be the result of a digitisation project that aims to preserve analogue or physical objects (for example 16mm film; archaeological finds; paintings; clothing, china etc). This eBook focusses on a so-called migration-based digital preservation strategy that in turn is based on file-format preservation and long-term data archiving processes. In this context, file-format preservation is the process of maximising the accessibility of a file through the repeated migration of it into any number of more stable or current file formats; and data archiving is the process of storing, for the long-term, all of the resulting digital assets using active archiving principles and processes. The original asset being preserved and all of it’s supporting ‘preservation’ versions are archived for the long-term. You’re covering as many bases as you can in terms of being able to use the file in the future. / 6 First draft of the lyrics to Born to Run. Handwritten by Bruce Springsteen. Migration is quite different from ‘emulation’ - the process of creating, managing 1974. and maintaining a system that replicates (emulates) the functionality of the original © Sotheby’s system. In such a system, a holistic approach is taken to digital preservation. A good example is computer-based games. These are often preserved by creating a software emulator that runs on a current computer platform within which the game can be used and accessed (played). The emulator replicates the capabilities of the original hardware and software (gaming console for example) on which the game was originally used. The use of an emulator is often easier than maintaining the ‘roadworthiness’ of the original system / console / whatever, despite the fact that the emulator itself has to be migrated as new computer platforms become available (and replace obsolete ones). The most fundamental component of a digital preservation process is the storing of digital objects in archival repositories - exactly what Arkivum/Perpetua does for you (no more and no less). It isn’t the process of digitising artefacts (taking photographs of, or 3D scanning, physical objects, transferring reel-to-reel tape to digital format, or scanning physical documents for example). For physical objects and analogue artefacts, digitisation is the pre-requisite for digital preservation processes. In the context of this eBook, digitisation is assumed to already have taken place. Digital preservation encompasses many processes and the ones that you need for your particular workflow will vary depending on the scope and requirements of your project. This eBook will explore the basic and fundamental elements of a digital preservation system along with descriptions and examples of the ‘optional extras’ that can be added to such a system to increases its capabilities. Don’t forget that as well as the actual processes and tools, digital preservation also encompasses the strategy in which this all sits (more on this below); the people and the best practices that they are going to use; the quality of the digital assets that you’re going to preserve (this generally applies if you have digitisation as part of your workflow); IT infrastructure and associated support (if you’re not going to use a hosted and managed service where this is all taken care of for you). / 7 Guaranteeing the long-term integrity of our digital assets is an absolutely crucial part of the Archives and Access Project – this archival heritage is extremely valuable to Tate’s future, and the future of British and international art history. We cannot afford to have them compromised in any way. Anna Henry, Digital Preservation Manager, Tate / 8 How do you know if you need digital preservation? Arkivum/Perpetua So-called ‘memory institutions’ of all shapes and sizes are facing increasing demands on their collections (that range from physical Arkivum/Perpetua™ is an automated digital preservation solution that and digital artworks, to museum artefacts, to local history / public supports the OAIS model and that archives, and beyond) from a range of sources.