Follow-Up Questions ASERL Webinar: “Intro to Digital Preservation #2 -- Forbearing the Digital Dark Age: Capturing Metadata for Digital Objects” Speaker = Chris Dietrich, National Park Service Session Recording: https://vimeo.com/63669010 Speaker’s PPT: http://bit.ly/10PKvu8 UPDATED – May 23, 2013 Tools 1. Is photo watermarking available using Windows Explorer? Microsoft Paint, which comes installed with Microsoft Windows, provides basic (albeit inelegant) watermarking capabilities. 2. Do Microsoft tools capture basic metadata automatically, without user intervention? Microsoft Office products capture very basic metadata automatically. The Author, Initials, and Company are captured automatically from a user’s Windows User Account settings. File system properties like File Size, Date, etc. are also automatically captured. The following Microsoft Knowledge Base articles provide details for each Microsoft Office product: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access-help/view-or-change-the-properties-for-an-office-file- HA010354245.aspx, http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/about-file-properties-HP003071721.aspx. Microsoft SharePoint can be configured to automatically capture metadata for items uploaded to libraries: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-help/introduction-to-managed-metadata-HA102832521.aspx. 3. Can you recommend tools/services that leverage geospatial data that do not provide latitude & longitude information? For example, I want to plot a photo of “Mt Doom” on a map but have no coordinates…. Embedding geospatial coordinates in digital objects (often called “geotagging”) can be done with a number of software tools. GPS Photo Link (http://www.geospatialexperts.com/gps-photo%20link.php) allows users to add coordinates to embedded metadata manually, or by selecting a photo(s) and then clicking a point on a Bing Maps satellite image. Other software with similar capability includes ArcGIS from Environmental Research Systems Institute (www.esri.com), and Geotag available from SourceForge (http://geotag.sourceforge.net/ ). There are many others! 4. Can you recommend any open source tools? It’s almost impossible to make recommendations without a good understanding of requirements. There are many open source tools for managing metadata for digital objects. A good place to find open source metadata tools is SourceForge (http://sourceforge.net/). Wikipedia has the following lists of photo software: • Free photo software: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Free_photo_software • Photo Software: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Photo_software 5. Can you provide screenshots of using at least a couple of the tools you described? GPS Photo Link Start Page GPS Photo Link Attribute Editor Tab MS Windows JPEG Properties (metadata) MS Windows JPEG Advanced Properties (metadata) MS Word 2010 Document Properties (metadata) Panel (available from document editing view) MS Word 2010 Advanced Properties (metadata) Formats 6. For the NPS metadata standards, what’s the difference between “Access constraints” and “constraints information”? Access Constraints describes the type of constraint on the object. Constraints Information provides for a free-text description of the constraint. For example: Access Constraints: “Restrictions apply on use and/or reproduction (Sensitive material) “ Constraints Information: “Abandoned mineral features may pose safety hazards, be archeological sites, or be endangered species habitat.” 7. What is the DNG format? DNG is an open RAW image format often referred to as a “digital negative”. DNG supports embedded metadata and generally provides somewhat smaller file sizes than other RAW formats. It has received mixed adoption since its introduction by Adobe Systems Inc. in 2004. Not all camera and software makers support the DNG format. An ISO standard based on DNG 1.3 is pending. 8. Which formats are best (or standards) for preservation and why? TIFF (for Tag (or Tagged) Image File Format) is widely adopted as the archival or master format for digital images. The following features of the TIFF format contribute to its desirability for preservation: • Lossless – there is no loss of data • Embedded metadata – supports EXIF metadata • Longevity – TIFF has been in use for over 20 years • Wide adoption – the most widely used format for preserving digital images • Broad support – supported by most image viewers/editors and web browsers TIFF resources: • Adobe TIFF page: http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/tiff/index.html • Library of Congress Digital Preservation TIFF page: http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/formats/fdd/fdd000022.shtml PART THREE: Metadata 9. Can you provide a specific example of embedded metadata? Here is an NPS JPEG photo that has metadata embedded in Exif header: The photo has been watermarked and renamed using elements in the embedded metadata. Here is a link to the photo online: https://www.dropbox.com/s/iumr2n3ynw1mu1d/MORU_20110714_tag.JPG?v=0mwng. You can open the photo to view all metadata using Opanda IExif, GPS Photo Link, or Photo Studio. 10. I’m concerned about the cost of creating embedded metadata (versus external metadata) –what’s the right balance of costs & level of effort to create and maintain these data? Creating metadata, whether embedded or external, will have some cost. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to estimate costs. Choosing one method over the other will not necessarily result in savings. It will take a concerted effort to determine what resources (people, equipment, software, budget, etc.) are available now and into the future, and determine from that analysis the best approach for your organization. Things to consider: • The cost of software to embed metadata versus the cost of creating and maintaining an external metadata system o External metadata systems run the gamut from sidecar text files or spreadsheets stored in the same directory as the digital object (cheap), to digital asset management (DAM) systems/databases (can be expensive) o Embedded Exif metadata and Windows Explorer search/discovery is affordable and may be adequate for many organizations • If you will be storing the metadata in a database, spreadsheet, XML, or text file: o How will you ensure that the digital objects and the external metadata do not get separated? o How will metadata get updated if something changes with the digital objects? o How will support for the external metadata system be provisioned for the long term? o Will you be able to digitally migrate the external metadata to newer formats/versions as needed to ensure future readability/access? • If metadata will be embedded in the digital assets themselves: o How will the embedded metadata be made viewable by humans and/or data systems? o How will you store, discover, and retrieve objects using the embedded metadata? o Will you be able to digitally migrate the objects over time and still preserve the metadata? • If both embedded and external metadata will be used: o How will metadata embedded in digital objects remain synchronized with the external metadata? o Will you be able to digitally migrate the objects over time and still preserve the metadata? • Do you have staff dedicated to work on metadata and data management and/or can you contract for the work? o Initial digitizing, organizing, and metadata creation may be a short-term cost o Management and curation of digital objects is a long-term commitment of people and money • Work on the highest priority/most valuable items first. This will pare down the size of the project (and costs) and will better ensure that the most important items get documented if your effort stalls or ends prematurely. • If you plan to manage digital objects for the long term, your initial management system is likely to be replaced (in whole or part) every five to ten years. Do you have the resources to support that turnover? 11. Does embedded metadata affect the use and management of check sums? I am not an expert in digital forensics so the following is my limited understanding. Checksums can be applied to any kind of file to determine if a file has changed or if two files are identical. If the checksum is for the file as a whole, then editing embedded metadata after applying the checksum will alter the checksum hash value, indicating that the file has been modified. Some digital object formats (e.g. Broadcast Wave files) allow checksums to be applied only to the data portion of the file, thus allowing modification of embedded metadata without affecting the checksum. I am not sure whether partial checksums are possible with JPEG and other file formats. Here is a resource on this topic: Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative: http://www.digitizationguidelines.gov/audio-visual/documents/md5.html 12. What is the importance of the different kinds of metadata in a digital preservation strategy? • Descriptive – discovery of assets and discerning between similar assets (disambiguation) • Technical (instrument) – analysis and usefulness of the asset for a particular use/consumer • Administrative – management • Structural – how is the asset(s) related to other assets? This affects asset storage, rendering, and access/sharing. • Preservation – what is the asset’s history, ownership and disposition schedule • Rights – who can access an asset, when do use-terms expire, etc. Categories are useful for understanding elements, not a strict, mutually exclusive taxonomy. Some categories can be considered subcategories of others, such as Rights being a subset of Preservation or Administrative.