Yale University Library

Digital Preservation Committee (DPC)

Meeting Notes prepared by Bobbie Pilette

 

Date:  October 3, 2005, 10:30a.m.-12

 

Present: Rebekah Irwin, Audrey Novak, E.C. Schroeder, Kevin Glick, David Gewirtz, Bobbie Pilette

Absent: Gretchen Gano


 Reviewed the latest version of the policy and made minor corrections—clarified statements.  The version with these changes, final draft 2d, will be sent out with these notes.

 

Bobbie reported on the NELINET seminar, Stayin’ Alive: Long-term Preservation of Digital Files.  It was a basic overview of the issues concerning long-term preservation of digital materials and very good in giving the complete picture from the 30,000 ft level.  Julie Schwartz from the CT State Library’s gave a case study of using OCLC Digital Archive for long-term retention of state government reports.  It was interesting in how they decided to focus in on important materials at risk.

 

Kevin reported the grant project and also his use case, Records.  For the use case there are seven issues that need to be considered when thinking about Records:

1.      Records themselves.  In paper it is a by-product of a transaction.  For digital records this may not hold true.  There is an ongoing discussion among archivists as to what constitutes a digital record.  Records make sense only within a context—it is the aggregate, not necessarily the individual record.  Within this discussion it is key to understand what is meant by “fixed” and “set aside”.  The meaning of these terms is still under discussion.

2.      Authenticity

3.      Trust as embodied by a system or a person

4.      Risk which relates to time and space.  Time is saving something to a disk; space is saving to a network

5.      Can’t preserve digital “original” can only preserve the ability to reproduce copies

6.      Digital component are the parts of the record saved

7.      Chain of preservation – name for the lifecycle

 

    =processing which must happen before preservation or the organizing step and is difficult to do digitally.

 

 

 

The grant project is Fedora & Preservation of University Records.  Fedora, originally designed for digital library use, is being looked at for university records.  Part of doing this involved defining the chain of preservation for university archivists.  Kevin directed us to look at the drafts they have developed.  Below are the web sites:

http://dca.tufts.edu/features/nhprc/reports/

http://dca.tufts.edu/features/nhprc/reports/1_1_draftpublic.pdf    (Requirements for a Trustworthy Recording System) http://dca.tufts.edu/features/nhprc/reports/2_1_draftpublic.pdf    (Req’ts for Trustworthy Preservation System)

http://dca.tufts.edu/features/nhprc/reports/3_1_draftpublic2.pdf   (Ingest Guide)

 

Discussion of who all should look at this and get back to Kevin with comments.  Suggestion to take to ILTS Manager mtgs.  Also decided that we would look these over and then come back on the 10th and decide how to approach these documents among the DPC.

 

David then took the last 15 minutes to talk about the ECAR (Education Center Applied Research) Model.  ECAR is looking at campus wide digital preservation.  He had a power point handout that covered the main points. 

 

Next Meeting: October 10th agenda (@Au Bon Pain):

·        Review the Fedora/Univ Rec’ds draft documents to discuss approach to reviewing these documents.

·        Use case:  public domain/web and null case (3rd party repository), David & Bobbie

 

Committee members’ schedules with regards to scheduled meetings unable to attend:

David                                                              

E.C.                                                                

Audrey                                                        Oct 24

Kevin                                                 Oct 10, Dec 5&12

Gretchen                                                         

Bobbie                                                            

Rebekah                                                     Oct 17