"Archives are retained information systems that are developed according to professional principles to meet anticipated demands of user clienteles in the context of the changing conditions created by legal environments and electronic or digital technologies. This article addresses issues in electronic publishing, including authentication, mutability, reformatting, preservation, and standards from an archival perspective. To ensure continuing access to electronically published texts, a special emphasis is placed on policy planning in the development and implementation of electronic systems" (p.701).
Critical Arguements
<P1> Archives are established, administered, and evaluated by institutions, organizations, and individuals to ensure the retention, preservation, and utilization of archival holdings (p.701) <P2> The three principal categories of archival materials are official files of institutions and organizations, publications issued by such bodies, and personal papers of individuals. . . . Electronic information technologies have had profound effects on aspects of all these categories (p.702) <P3> The primary archival concern with regard to electronic publishing is that the published material should be transferred to archival custody. When the transfer occurs, the archivist must address the issues of authentication, appraisal, arrangement, description, and preservation or physical protection (p.702) <P4> The most effective way to satisfy archival requirements for handling electronic information is the establishment of procedures and standards to ensure that valuable material is promptly transferred to archival custody in a format which will permit access on equipment that will be readily available in the future (p.702) <P5> Long-term costs and access requirements are the crucial factors in determining how much information should be retained in electronic formats (p.703) <P6> Authentication involves a determination of the validity or integrity of information. Integrity requires the unbroked custody of a body of information by a responsible authority or individual <warrant> (p.703) <P7> From an archival perspective, the value of information is dependent on its content and the custodial responsibility of the agency that maintains it -- e.g., the source determines authenticity. The authentication of archival information requires that it be verified as to source, date, and content <warrant> (p.704) <P8> Information that is mutable, modifiable, or changeable loses its validity if the persons adding, altering, or deleting information cannot be identified and the time, place and nature of the changes is unknown (p.704) <P9> [P]reservation is more a matter of access to information than it is a question of survival of any physical information storage media (p.704) <P10> [T]o approach the preservation of electronic texts by focusing on physical threats will miss the far more pressing matter of ensuring continued accessibility to the information on such storage media (p.706) <P11> If the information is to remain accessible as long as paper, preservation must be a front-end, rather than an ex post facto, action (p.708) <P12> [T]he preservation of electronic texts is first and foremost a matter of editorial and administrative policy rather than of techniques and materials (p.708) <P13> Ultimately, the preservation of electronic publications cannot be solely an archival issue but an administrative one that can be addressed only if the creators and publishers take an active role in providing resources necessary to ensure that ongoing accesibility is part of initial system and product design (p.709) <P14> An encouraging development is that SGML has been considered to be a critical element for electronic publishing because of its transportability and because it supports multiple representations of a single text . . . (p.711) <P15> Underlying all questions of access is the fundamental consideration of cost (p.711)
Type
Electronic Journal
Title
Keeping Memory Alive: Practices for Preserving Digital Content at the National Digital Library Program of the Library of Congress
CA An overview of the major issues and initiatives in digital preservation at the Library of Congress. "In the medium term, the National Digital Library Program is focusing on two operational approaches. First, steps are taken during conversion that are likely to make migration or emulation less costly when they are needed. Second, the bit streams generated by the conversion process are kept alive through replication and routine refreshing supported by integrity checks. The practices described here provide examples of how those steps are implemented to keep the content of American Memory alive."
Phrases
<P1> The practices described here should not be seen as policies of the Library of Congress; nor are they suggested as best practices in any absolute sense. NDLP regards them as appropriate practices based on real experience, the nature and content of the originals, the primary purposes of the digitization, the state of technology, the availability of resources, the scale of the American Memory digital collection, and the goals of the program. They cover not just the storage of content and associated metadata, but also aspects of initial capture and quality review that support the long-term retention of content digitized from analog sources. <P2> The Library recognizes that digital information resources, whether born digital or converted from analog forms, should be acquired, used, and served alongside traditional resources in the same format or subject area. Such responsibility will include ensuring that effective access is maintained to the digital content through American Memory and via the Library's main catalog and, in coordination with the units responsible for the technical infrastructure, planning migration to new technology when needed. <P3> Refreshing can be carried out in a largely automated fashion on an ongoing basis. Migration, however, will require substantial resources, in a combination of processing time, out-sourced contracts, and staff time. Choice of appropriate formats for digital masters will defer the need for large-scale migration. Integrity checks and appropriate capture of metadata during the initial capture and production process will reduce the resource requirements for future migration steps. <warrant> We can be certain that migration of content to new data formats will be necessary at some point. The future will see industrywide adoption of new data formats with functional advantages over current standards. However, it will be difficult to predict exactly which metadata will be useful to support migration, when migration of master formats will be needed, and the nature and extent of resource needs. Human experts will need to decide when to undertake migration and develop tools for each migration step. <P4> Effective preservation of resources in digital form requires (a) attention early in the life-cycle, at the moment of creation, publication, or acquisition and (b) ongoing management (with attendant costs) to ensure continuing usability. <P5> The National Digital Library Program has identified several categories of metadata needed to support access and management for digital content. Descriptive metadata supports discovery through search and browse functions. Structural metadata supports presentation of complex objects by representing relationships between components, such as sequences of images. In addition, administrative metadata is needed to support management tasks, such as access control, archiving, and migration. Individual metadata elements may support more than one function, but the categorization of elements by function has proved useful. <P6> It has been recognized that metadata representations appropriate for manipulation and long-term retention may not always be appropriate for real-time delivery. <P7> It has also been realized that some basic descriptive metadata (at the very least a title or brief description) should be associated with the structural and administrative metadata. <P8> During 1999, an internal working group reviewed past experience and prototype exercises and compiled a core set of metadata elements that will serve the different functions identified. This set will be tested and refined as part of pilot activities during 2000. <P9> Master formats are well documented and widely deployed, preferably formal standards and preferably non-proprietary. Such choices should minimize the need for future migration or ensure that appropriate and affordable tools for migration will be developed by the industry. <warrant>
Conclusions
RQ "Developing long-term strategies for preserving digital resources presents challenges associated with the uncertainties of technological change. There is currently little experience on which to base predictions of how often migration to new formats will be necessary or desirable or whether emulation will prove cost-effective for certain categories of resources. ... Technological advances, while sure to present new challenges, will also provide new solutions for preserving digital content."
Type
Electronic Journal
Title
A Spectrum of Interoperability: The Site for Science Prototype for the NSDL
"Currently, NSF is funding 64 projects, each making its own contribution to the library, with a total annual budget of about $24 million. Many projects are building collections; others are developing services; a few are carrying out targeted research.The NSDL is a broad program to build a digital library for education in science, mathematics, engineering and technology. It is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Undergraduate Education. . . . The Core Integration task is to ensure that the NSDL is a single coherent library, not simply a set of unrelated activities. In summer 2000, the NSF funded six Core Integration demonstration projects, each lasting a year. One of these grants was to Cornell University and our demonstration is known as Site for Science. It is at http://www.siteforscience.org/ [Site for Science]. In late 2001, the NSF consolidated the Core Integration funding into a single grant for the production release of the NSDL. This grant was made to a collaboration of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), Columbia University and Cornell University. The technical approach being followed is based heavily on our experience with Site for Science. Therefore this article is both a description of the strategy for interoperability that was developed for Site for Science and an introduction to the architecture being used by the NSDL production team."
ISBN
1082-9873
Critical Arguements
CA "[T]his article is both a description of the strategy for interoperability that was developed for the [Cornell University's NSF-funded] Site for Science and an introduction to the architecture being used by the NSDL production team."
Phrases
<P1> The grand vision is that the NSDL become a comprehensive library of every digital resource that could conceivably be of value to any aspect of education in any branch of science and engineering, both defined very broadly. <P2> Interoperability among heterogeneous collections is a central theme of the Core Integration. The potential collections have a wide variety of data types, metadata standards, protocols, authentication schemes, and business models. <P3> The goal of interoperability is to build coherent services for users, from components that are technically different and managed by different organizations. This requires agreements to cooperate at three levels: technical, content and organizational. <P4> Much of the research of the authors of this paper aims at . . . looking for approaches to interoperability that have low cost of adoption, yet provide substantial functionality. One of these approaches is the metadata harvesting protocol of the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) . . . <P5> For Site for Science, we identified three levels of digital library interoperability: Federation; Harvesting; Gathering. In this list, the top level provides the strongest form of interoperability, but places the greatest burden on participants. The bottom level requires essentially no effort by the participants, but provides a poorer level of interoperability. The Site for Science demonstration concentrated on the harvesting and gathering, because other projects were exploring federation. <P6> In an ideal world all the collections and services that the NSDL wishes to encompass would support an agreed set of standard metadata. The real world is less simple. . . . However, the NSDL does have influence. We can attempt to persuade collections to move along the interoperability curve. <warrant> <P7> The Site for Science metadata strategy is based on two principles. The first is that metadata is too expensive for the Core Integration team to create much of it. Hence, the NSDL has to rely on existing metadata or metadata that can be generated automatically. The second is to make use of as much of the metadata available from collections as possible, knowing that it varies greatly from none to extensive. Based on these principles, Site for Science, and subsequently the entire NSDL, developed the following metadata strategy: Support eight standard formats; Collect all existing metadata in these formats; Provide crosswalks to Dublin Core; Assemble all metadata in a central metadata repository; Expose all metadata records in the repository for service providers to harvest; Concentrate limited human effort on collection-level metadata; Use automatic generation to augment item-level metadata. <P8> The strategy developed by Site for Science and now adopted by the NSDL is to accumulate metadata in the native formats provided by the collections . . . If a collection supports the protocols of the Open Archives Initiative, it must be able to supply unqualified Dublin Core (which is required by the OAI) as well as the native metadata format. <P9> From a computing viewpoint, the metadata repository is the key component of the Site for Science system. The repository can be thought of as a modern variant of the traditional library union catalog, a catalog that holds comprehensive catalog records from a group of libraries. . . . Metadata from all the collections is stored in the repository and made available to providers of NSDL service.
Conclusions
RQ 1 "Can a small team of librarians manage the collection development and metadata strategies for a very large library?" RQ 2 "Can the NSDL actually build services that are significantly more useful than the general web search services?"
Type
Electronic Journal
Title
Primary Sources, Research, and the Internet: The Digital Scriptorium at Duke
First Monday, Peer Reviewed Journal on the Internet
Publication Year
1997
Volume
2
Issue
9
Critical Arguements
CA "As the digital revolution moves us ever closer to the idea of the 'virtual library,' repositories of primary sources and other archival materials have both a special opportunity and responsibility. Since the materials in their custody are, by definition, often unique, these institutions will need to work very carefully with scholars and other researchers to determine what is the most effective way of making this material accessible in a digital environment."
Phrases
<P1> The matter of Internet access to research materials and collections is not one of simply doing what we have always done -- except digitally. It represents instead an opportunity to rethink the fundamental triangular relationship between libraries and archives, their collections, and their users. <P2> Digital information as it exists on the Internet today requires more navigational, contextual, and descriptive data than is currently provided in traditional card catalogs or their more modern electronic equivalent. One simply cannot throw up vast amounts of textual or image-based data onto the World Wide Web and expect existing search engines to make much sense of it or users to be able to digest the results. ... Archivists and manuscript curators have for many years now been providing just that sort of contextual detail in the guides, finding aids, and indexes that they have traditionally prepared for their holdings. <P3> Those involved in the Berkeley project understood that HTML was essentially a presentational encoding scheme and lacked the formal structural and content-based encoding that SGML would offer. <P4> Encoded Archival Description is quickly moving towards become an internationally embraced standard for the encoding of archival metadata in a wide variety of archival repositories and special collections libraries. And the Digital Scriptorium at Duke has become one of the early implementors of this standard. <warrant>
Conclusions
RQ "Duke is currently involved in a project that is funded through NEH and also involves the libraries of Stanford, the University of Virginia, and the University of California-Berkeley. This project (dubbed the "American Heritage Virtual Digital Archives Project") will create a virtual archive of encoded finding aids from all four institutions. This archive will permit seamless searching of these finding aids -- at a highly granular level of detail -- through a single search engine on one site and will, it is hoped, provide a model for a more comprehensive national system in the near future."
CA Describes efforts undertaken at the National Library of New Zealand to ensure preservation of electronic resources.
Phrases
<P1> The National Library Act 1965 provides the legislative framework for the National Library of New Zealand '... to collect, preserve, and make available recorded knowledge, particularly that relating to New Zealand, to supplement and further the work of other libraries in New Zealand, and to enrich the cultural and economic life of New Zealand and its cultural interchanges with other nations.' Legislation currently before Parliament, if enacted, will give the National Library the mandate to collect digital resources for preservation purposes. <warrant> (p. 18) <P2> So, the Library has an organisational commitment and may soon have the legislative environment to support the collection, management and preservation of digital objects. ... The next issue is what needs to be done to ensure that a viable preservation programme can actually be put in place. (p. 18) <P3> As the Library had already begun systematising its approach to resource discovery metadata, development of a preservation metadata schema for use within the Library was a logical next step. (p. 18) <P4> Work on the schema was initially informed by other international endeavours relating to preservation metadata, particularly that undertaken by the National Library of Australia. Initiatives through the CEDARS programme, OCLC/RLG activities and the emerging consensus regarding the role of the OAIS Reference Model ... were also taken into account. <warrant> (p. 18-19) <P5> The Library's Preservation Metadata schema is designed to strike a balance between the principles of preservation metadata, as expressed through the OAIS Information Model, and the practicalities of implementing a working set of preservation metadata. The same incentive informs a recent OCLC/RLG report on the OAIS model. (p. 19) <P6> [I]t is unlikely that anything resembling a comprehensive schema will become available in the short term. However, the need is pressing. (p. 19) <P7> The development of the preservation metadata schema is one component of an ongoing programme of activities needed to ensure the incorporation of digital material into the Library's core business processes with a view to the long-term accessibility of those resources. <warrant> (p. 19) <P8> The aim of the above activities is for the Library to be acknowledged as a 'trusted repository' for digital material which ensures the viability and authenticity of digital objects over time. (p. 20) <P9> The Library will also have to develop relationships with other organisations that might wish to achieve 'trusted repository' status in a country with a small population base and few agencies of appropriate size, funding and willingness to take on the role.
Conclusions
RQ There are still a number of important issues to be resolved before the Library's preservation programme can be deemed a success, including the need for: higher level of awareness of the need for digital preservation within the community of 'memory institutions' and more widely; metrics regarding the size and scope of the problem; finance to research and implement digital preservation; new skill sets for implementing digital preservation, e.g. running the multiplicity of hardware/software involved, digital conservation/archaeology; agreed international approaches to digital preservation; practical models to match the high level conceptual work already undertaken internationally; co-operation/collaboration between the wider range of agents potentially able to assist in developing digital preservation solutions, e.g. the computing industry; and, last but not least, clarity around intellectual property, copyright, privacy and moral rights.
SOW
DC OAIS emerged out of an initiative spearheaded by NASA's Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems. It has been shaped and promoted by the RLG and OCLC. Several international projects have played key roles in shaping the OAIS model and adapting it for use in libraries, archives and research repositories. OAIS-modeled repositories include the CEDARS Project, Harvard's Digital Repository, Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), the Library of Congress' Archival Information Package for audiovisual materials, MIT's D-Space, OCLC's Digital Archive and TERM: the Texas Email Repository Model.
Type
Electronic Journal
Title
A Metadata Framework Developed at the Tsinghua University Library to Aid in the Preservation of Digital Resources
This article provides an overview of work completed at Tsinghua University Library in which a metadata framework was developed to aid in the preservation of digital resources. The metadata framework is used for the creation of metadata to describe resources, and includes an encoding standard used to store metadata and resource structures in information systems. The author points out that the Tsinghua University Library metadata framework provides a successful digital preservation solution that may be an appropriate solution for other organizations as well.
Notes
Well laid out diagrams show the structural layers of resources; encoding exampes are included also.
ISBN
1082-9873
DOI
10.1045/november2002-niu
Critical Arguements
CA The author delineates the metadata schema implemented at Tsinghua University Library which allows for resource description and preservation.
Type
Electronic Journal
Title
The Dublin Core Metadata Inititiative: Mission, Current Activities, and Future Directions
Metadata is a keystone component for a broad spectrum of applications that are emerging on the Web to help stitch together content and services and make them more visible to users. The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) has led the development of structured metadata to support resource discovery. This international community has, over a period of 6 years and 8 workshops, brought forth: A core standard that enhances cross-disciplinary discovery and has been translated into 25 languages to date; A conceptual framework that supports the modular development of auxiliary metadata components; An open consensus building process that has brought to fruition Australian, European and North American standards with promise as a global standard for resource discovery; An open community of hundreds of practitioners and theorists who have found a common ground of principles, procedures, core semantics, and a framework to support interoperable metadata.
Type
Web Page
Title
An Assessment of Options for Creating Enhanced Access to Canada's Audio-Visual Heritage
CA "This project was conducted by Paul Audley & Associates to investigate the feasibility of single window access to information about Canada's audio-visual heritage. The project follows on the recommendations of Fading Away, the 1995 report of the Task Force on the Preservation and Enhanced Use of Canada's Audio-Visual Heritage, and the subsequent 1997 report Search + Replay. Specific objectives of this project were to create a profile of selected major databases of audio-visual materials, identify information required to meet user needs, and suggest models for single-window access to audio-visual databases. Documentary research, some 35 interviews, and site visits to organizations in Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal provided the basis upon which the recommendations of this report were developed."
Type
Web Page
Title
JISC/NPO studies on the preservation of electronic materials: A framework of data types and formats, and issues affecting the long term preservation of digital material
CA Proposes a framework for preserving digital objects and discusses steps in the preservation process. Addresses a series of four questions: Why preserve? How much? How? And Where? Proposes a "Preservation Complexity Scorecard" to help identify the complexity of preservation needs and the appropriate preservation approach for a given object. "Although a great deal has been discussed and written about digital material preservation, there would appear to be no overall structure which brings together the findings of the numerous contributors to the debate, and allows them to be compared. This Report attempts to provide such a structure, whereby it should be possible to identify the essential elements of the preservation debate and to determine objectively the criticality of the other unresolved issues. This Report attempts to identify the most critical issues and employ them in order to determine their affect [sic] on preservation practice." (p. 5)
Conclusions
RQ "The study concludes that the overall management task in long term preservation is to moderate the pressure to preserve (Step 1) with the constraints dictated by a cost-effective archive (Step 3). This continuing process of moderation is documented through the Scorecard." (p. 6) "The Study overall recommends that a work programme should be started to: (a) Establish a Scorecard approach (to measure preservation complexity), (b) Establish an inventory of archive items (with complexity ratings) and (c) Establish a Technology Watch (to monitor shifts in technology), in order to be able to manage technological change. And in support of this, (a) establish a programme of work to explore the interaction of stakeholders and a four level contextual mode in the preservation process." (p. 6) A four level contextual approach, with data dictionary entry definitions, should be built in order to provide an information structure that will permit the successful retrieval and interpretation of an object in 50 years time. A study should be established to explore the principle of encapsulating documentsusing the four levels of context, stored in a format, possibly encrypted, that can be transferred across technologies and over time. <warrant> (p. 31) A more detailed study should be made of the inter-relationships of the ten stakeholders, and how they can be made to support the long term preservation of digital material. This will be linked to the economics of archive management (the cost model), changes in legislation (Legal Deposit, etc.), the risks of relying on links between National Libraries to maintain collections (threats of wholesale destruction of collections), and loss through viruses (technological turbulence). (p. 36) A technology management trail (within the Scorecard -- see Step 2 of the Framework) should be established before the more complex digital material is stored. This is to ensure that, for an item of digital material, the full extent of the internal interrelationships are understood, and the implications for long term preservation in a variety of successive environments are documented. (p. 37)
SOW
DC "The study is part of a wider programme of studies, funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee ("JISC"). The programme was initiated as a consequence of a two day workshop at Warwick University, in late November 1995. The workshop addressed the Long Term Preservation of Electronic Materials. The attendees represented an important cross-section of academic, librarian, curatorial, managerial and technological interests. 18 potential action points emerged, and these were seen as a basis for initiating further activity. After consultation, JISC agreed to fund a programme of studies." (p. 7) "The programme of studies is guided by the Digital Archive Working Group, which reports to the Management Committee of the National Preservation Office. The programme is administered by the British Library Research and Innovation Centre." (p. 2)
CA Discussion of the challenges faced by librarians and archivists who must determine which and how much of the mass amounts of digitally recorded sound materials to preserve. Identifies various types of digital sound formats and the varying standards to which they are created. Specific challenges discussed include copyright issues; technologies and platforms; digitization and preservation; and metadata and other standards.
Conclusions
RQ "Whether between record companies and archives or with others, some type of collaborative approach to audio preservation will be necessary if significant numbers of audio recordings at risk are to be preserved for posterity. ... One particular risk of preservation programs now is redundancy. ... Inadequate cataloging is a serious impediment to preservation efforts. ... It would be useful to archives, and possibly to intellectual property holders as well, if archives could use existing industry data for the bibliographic control of published recordings and detailed listings of the music recorded on each disc or tape. ... Greater collaboration between libraries and the sound recording industry could result in more comprehensive catalogs that document recording sessions with greater specificity. With access to detailed and authoritative information about the universe of published sound recordings, libraries could devote more resources to surveying their unpublished holdings and collaborate on the construction of a preservation registry to help reduce preservation redundancy. ... Many archivists believe that adequate funding for preservation will not be forthcoming unless and until the recordings preserved can be heard more easily by the public. ... If audio recordings that do not have mass appeal are to be preserved, that responsibility will probably fall to libraries and archives. Within a partnership between archives and intellectual property owners, archives might assume responsibility for preserving less commercial music in return for the ability to share files of preserved historical recordings."
This document provides some background on preservation metadata for those interested in digital preservation. It first attempts to explain why preservation metadata is seen as an essential part of most digital preservation strategies. It then gives a broad overview of the functional and information models defined in the Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS) and describes the main elements of the Cedars outline preservation metadata specification. The next sections take a brief look at related metadata initiatives, make some recommendations for future work and comment on cost issues. At the end there are some brief recommendations for collecting institutions and the creators of digital content followed by some suggestions for further reading.
Critical Arguements
CA "This document is intended to provide a brief introduction to current preservation metadata developments and introduce the outline metadata specifications produced by the Cedars project. It is aimed in particular at those who may have responsibility for digital preservation in the UK further and higher education community, e.g. senior staff in research libraries and computing services. It should also be useful for those undertaking digital content creation (digitisation) initiatives, although it should be noted that specific guidance on this is available elsewhere. The guide may also be of interest to other kinds of organisations that have an interest in the long-term management of digital resources, e.g. publishers, archivists and records managers, broadcasters, etc. This document aimes to provide: A rationale for the creation and maintenance of preservation metadata to support digital preservation strategies, e.g. migration or emulation; An introduction to the concepts and terminology used in the influential ISO Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS); Brief information on the Cedars outline preservation metadata specification and the outcomes of some related metadata initiatives; Some notes on the cost implications of preservation metadata and how these might be reduced.
Conclusions
RQ "In June 2000, a group of archivists, computer scientists and metadata experts met in the Netherlands to discuss metadata developments related to recordkeeping and the long-term preservation of archives. One of the key conclusions made at this working meeting was that the recordkeeping metadata communities should attempt to co-operate more with other metatdata initiatives. The meeting also suggested research into the contexts of creation and use, e.g. identifying factors that might encourage or discourage creators form meeting recordkeeping metadata requirements. This kind of research would also be useful for wider preservation metadata developments. One outcome of this meeting was the setting up of an Archiving Metadata Forum (AMF) to form the focus of future developments." ... "Future work on preservation metadata will need to focus on several key issues. Firstly, there is an urgent need for more practical experience of undertaking digital preservation strategies. Until now, many preservation metadata initiatives have largely been based on theoretical considerations or high-level models like the OAIS. This is not in itself a bad thing, but it is now time to begin to build metadata into the design of working systems that can test the viability of digital preservation strategies in a variety of contexts. This process has already begun in initiatives like the Victorian Electronic Records Stategy and the San Diego Supercomputer Center's 'self-validating knowledge-based archives'. A second need is for increased co-operation between the many metadata initiatives that have an interest in digital preservation. This may include the comparison and harmonisation of various metadata specifications, where this is possible. The OCLC/LG working group is an example of how this has been taken forward whitin a particular domain. There is a need for additional co-operation with recordkeeping metadata specialists, computing scientists and others in the metadata research community. Thirdly, there is a need for more detailed research into how metadata will interact with different formats, preservation strategies and communities of users. This may include some analysis of what metadata could be automatically extracted as part of the ingest process, an investigation of the role of content creators in metadata provision, and the production of user requirements." ... "Also, thought should be given to the development of metadata standards that will permit the easy exchange of preservation metadata (and information packages) between repositories." ... "As well as ensuring that digital repositories are able to facilitate the automatic capture of metadata, some thought should also be given to how best digital repositories could deal with any metadata that might already exist."
SOW
DC "Funded by JISC (the Joint Information Systems Committee of the UK higher education funding councils), as part of its Electronic Libraries (eLib) Programme, Cedars was the only project in the programme to focus on digital preservation." ... "In the digitial library domain, the development of a recommendation on preservation metadata is being co-ordinated by a working group supported by OCLC and the RLG. The membership of the working group is international, and inlcudes key individuals who were involved in the development of the Cedars, NEDLIB and NLA metadata specifications."
Type
Web Page
Title
Metadata for preservation : CEDARS project document AIW01
This report is a review of metadata formats and initiatives in the specific area of digital preservation. It supplements the DESIRE Review of metadata (Dempsey et al. 1997). It is based on a literature review and information picked-up at a number of workshops and meetings and is an attempt to briefly describe the state of the art in the area of metadata for digital preservation.
Critical Arguements
CA "The projects, initiatives and formats reviewed in this report show that much work remains to be done. . . . The adoption of persistent and unique identifiers is vital, both in the CEDARS project and outside. Many of these initiatives mention "wrappers", "containers" and "frameworks". Some thought should be given to how metadata should be integrated with data content in CEDARS. Authenticity (or intellectual preservation) is going to be important. It will be interesting to investigate whether some archivists' concerns with custody or "distributed custody" will have relevance to CEDARS."
Conclusions
RQ Which standards and initiatives described in this document have proved viable preservation metadata models?
SOW
DC OAIS emerged out of an initiative spearheaded by NASA's Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems. It has been shaped and promoted by the RLG and OCLC. Several international projects have played key roles in shaping the OAIS model and adapting it for use in libraries, archives and research repositories. OAIS-modeled repositories include the CEDARS Project, Harvard's Digital Repository, Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), the Library of Congress' Archival Information Package for audiovisual materials, MIT's D-Space, OCLC's Digital Archive and TERM: the Texas Email Repository Model.
CA In March 2003, the intention of undertaking an international survey of LOM implementations was announced at the plenary meeting of the "Information Technology for Learning, Education and Training", ISO/IEC JTC1/SC36 sub-committee. The ISO/IEC JTC1/SC36 committee is international in both membership and emphasis, and has a working group, Working Group (WG) 4, "Management and Delivery for Learning, Education, and Training," which has been explicitly charged with the task of contributing to future standardization work on the LOM. <warrant> The international LOM Survey focuses on two questions: 1) "Which elements were selected for use or population?"; and 2) "How were these elements used, or what where the types of values assigned to them?" This report also attempts to draw a number of tentative suggestions and conclusions for further standardization work
Conclusions
RQ Based on its findings, the preliminary survey report was able to suggest a number of conclusions: First, fewer and better-defined elements may be more effective than the range of choice and interpretive possibilities currently allowed by the LOM. This seems to be especially the case regarding educational elements, which are surprisingly underutilized for metadata that it ostensibly and primarily educational. Second, clear and easily-supported means of working with local, customized vocabularies would also be very valuable. Third, it also seems useful to ensure that structures are provided to accommodate complex but more conventional aspects of resource description. These would include multiple title versions, as well as multilingual descriptions and values.
SOW
DC On June 12, 2002, 1484.12.1 - 2002 Learning Object Metadata (LOM) was approved by the IEEE-Standards Association.
Type
Web Page
Title
METS : Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard
CA "METS, although in its early stages, is already sufficiently established amongst key digital library players that it can reasonably be considered the only viable standard for digital library objects in the foreseeable future. Although METS may be an excellent framework, it is just that and only that. It does not prescribe the content of the metadata itself, and this is a continuing problem for METS and all other schema to contend with if they are to realize their full functionality and usefulness."
Conclusions
RQ The standardization (via some sort of cataloging rules) of the content held by metadata "containers" urgently needs to be addressed. If not, the full value of any metadata scheme, no matter how extensible or robust, will not be realized.
Just like other memory institutions, libraries will have to play an important part in the Semantic Web. In that context, ontologies and conceptual models in the field of cultural heritage information are crucial, and the interoperability between these ontologies and models perhaps even more crucial. This document reviews four projects and models that the FRBR Review Group recommends for consideration as to interoperability with FRBR.
Publisher
International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions
Critical Arguements
CA "Just like other memory institutions, libraries will have to play an important part in the Semantic Web. In that context, ontologies and conceptual models in the field of cultural heritage information are crucial, and the interoperability between these ontologies and models perhaps even more crucial."
Conclusions
RQ 
SOW
DC "Some members of the CRM-SIG, including Martin Doerr himself, also are subscribers to the FRBR listserv, and Patrick Le Boeuf, chair of the FRBR Review Group, also is a member of the CRM-SIG and ISO TC46/SC4/WG9 (the ISO Group on CRM). A FRBR to CRM mapping is available from the CIDOC CRM-SIG listserv archive." ... This report was produced by the Cataloguing Section of IFLA, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. 
CA The metadata necessary for successful management and use of digital objects is both more extensive than and different from the metadata used for managing collections of printed works and other physical materials. Without structural metadata, the page image or text files comprising the digital work are of little use, and without technical metadata regarding the digitization process, scholars may be unsure of how accurate a reflection of the original the digital version provides. For internal management purposes, a library must have access to appropriate technical metadata in order to periodically refresh and migrate the data, ensuring the durability of valuable resources.
SOW
DC OAIS emerged out of an initiative spearheaded by NASA's Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems. It has been shaped and promoted by the RLG and OCLC. Several international projects have played key roles in shaping the OAIS model and adapting it for use in libraries, archives and research repositories. OAIS-modeled repositories include the CEDARS Project, Harvard's Digital Repository, Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), the Library of Congress' Archival Information Package for audiovisual materials, MIT's D-Space, OCLC's Digital Archive and TERM: the Texas Email Repository Model.
Type
Web Page
Title
Creating and Documenting Text: A Guide to Good Practice
CA "The aim of this Guide is to take users through the basic steps involved in creating and documenting an electronic text or similar digital resource. ... This Guide assumes that the creators of electronic texts have a number of common concerns. For example, that they wish their efforts to remain viable and usable in the long-term, and not to be unduly constrained by the limitations of current hardware and software. Similarly, that they wish others to be able to reuse their work, for the purposes of secondary analysis, extension, or adaptation. They also want the tools, techniques, and standards that they adopt to enable them to capture those aspects of any non-electronic sources which they consider to be significant -- whilst at the same time being practical and cost-effective to implement."
Conclusions
RQ "While a single metadata scheme, adopted and implemented wholescale would be the ideal, it is probable that a proliferation of metadata schemes will emerge and be used by different communities. This makes the current work centred on integrated services and interoperability all the more important. ... The Warwick Framework (http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/resources/wf.html) for example suggests the concept of a container architecture, which can support the coexistence of several independently developed and maintained metadata packages which may serve other functions (rights management, administrative metadata, etc.). Rather than attempt to provide a metadata scheme for all web resources, the Warwick Framework uses the Dublin Core as a starting point, but allows individual communities to extend this to fit their own subject-specific requirements. This movement towards a more decentralised, modular and community-based solution, where the 'communities of expertise' themselves create the metadata they need has much to offer. In the UK, various funded organisations such as the AHDS (http://ahds.ac.uk/), and projects like ROADS (http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/roads/) and DESIRE (http://www.desire.org/) are all involved in assisting the development of subject-based information gateways that provide metadata-based services tailored to the needs of particular user communities."
This document is a revision and expansion of "Metadata Made Simpler: A guide for libraries," published by NISO Press in 2001.
Publisher
NISO Press
Critical Arguements
CA An overview of what metadata is and does, aimed at librarians and other information professionals. Describes various metadata schemas. Concludes with a bibliography and glossary.
Type
Web Page
Title
Use of Encoded Archival Description (EAD) for Manuscript Collection Finding Aids
Presented in 1999 to the Library's Collection Development & Management Committee, this report outlines support for implementing EAD in delivery of finding aids for library collections over the Web. It describes the limitations of HTML, provides an introduction to SGML, XML, and EAD, outlines the advantages of conversion from HTML to EAD, the conversion process, the proposed outcome, and sources for further information.
Publisher
National Library of Australia
Critical Arguements
CA As use of the World Wide Web has increased, so has the need of users to be able to discover web-based information resources easily and efficiently, and to be able to repeat that discovery in a consistent manner. Using SGML to mark up web-based documents facilitates such resource discovery.
Conclusions
RQ To what extent have the mainstream web browser companies fulfilled their committment to support native viewing of SGML/XML documents?
Type
Web Page
Title
Descriptive Metadata Guidelines for RLG Cultural Materials
To ensure that the digital collections submitted to RLG Cultural Materials can be discovered and understood, RLG has compiled these Descriptive Metadata Guidelines for contributors. While these guidelines reflect the needs of one particular service, they also represent a case study in information sharing across community and national boundaries. RLG Cultural Materials engages a wide range of contributors with different local practices and institutional priorities. Since it is impossible to find -- and impractical to impose -- one universally applicable standard as a submission format, RLG encourages contributors to follow the suite of standards applicable to their particular community (p.1).
Critical Arguements
CA "These guidelines . . . do not set a new standard for metadata submission, but rather support a baseline that can be met by any number of strategies, enabling participating institutions to leverage their local descriptions. These guidelines also highlight the types of metadata that enhance functionality for RLG Cultural Materials. After a contributor submits a collection, RLG maps that description into the RLG Cultural Materials database using the RLG Cultural Materials data model. This ensures that metadata from the various participant communities is integrated for efficient searching and retrieval" (p.1).
Conclusions
RQ Not applicable.
SOW
DC RLG comprises more than 150 research and cultural memory institutions, and RLG Cultural Materials elicits contributions from countless museums, archives, and libraries from around the world that, although they might retain local descriptive standards and metadata schemas, must conform to the baseline standards prescribed in this document in order to integrate into RLG Cultural Materials. Appendix A represents and evaluates the most common metadata standards with which RLG Cultural Materians is able to work.
Expanded version of the article "Ensuring the Longevity of Digital Documents" that appeared in the January 1995 edition of Scientific American (Vol. 272, Number 1, pp. 42-7).
Publisher
Council on Library and Information Resources
Critical Arguements
CA "It is widely accepted that information technology is revolutionizing our concepts of documents and records in an upheaval at least as great as the introduction of printing, if not of writing itself. The current generation of digital records therefore has unique historical significance; yet our digital documents are far more fragile than paper. In fact, the record of the entire present period of history is in jeopardy. The content and historical value of many governmental, organizational, legal, financial, and technical records, scientific databases, and personal documents may be irretrievably lost to future generations if we do not take steps to preserve them."
Conclusions
RQ "We must develop evolving standards for encoding explanatory annotations to bootstrap the interpretation of digital documents that are saved in nonstandard forms. We must develop techniques for saving the bit streams of software-dependent documents and their associated systems and application software. We must ensure that the hardware environments necessary to run this software are described in sufficient detail to allow their future emulation. We must save these specifications as digital documents, encoded using the bootstrap standards developed for saving annotations so that they can be read without special software (lest we be recursively forced to emulate one system in order to learn how to emulate another). We must associate contextual information with our digital documents to provide provenance as well as explanatory annotations in a form that can be translated into successive standards so as to remain easily readable. Finally, we must ensure the systematic and continual migration of digital documents onto new media, preserving document and program bit streams verbatim, while translating their contextual information as necessary."
CA The main advantages of METS consists of the following: First, it provides a syntax for transferring the entire digital objects along with their associated metadata and other supporting files. Second, it provides a functional syntax, a basis for providing users the means of navigating through and manipulating the object. Third, it provides a syntax for archiving the data as an integrated whole.
