NDSA:Clearinghouse Action Team

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Clearinghouse Action Team (Group B)

Description of Work

Develop a clearinghouse that will enable a variety of stakeholders (content producers, archives and libraries and other potential preservationists) to:

• Determine what specific types of content or collections are at risk.
• Identify at-risk content or collections for preservation.
• Match orphan collections with appropriate trusted partner for access and preservation.

At the December 8th call, it was decided that this group would start with determining what specific types of content or collections are at risk.

Next meetings are:

Wednesdays at 10:00 am PT/ 12:00 noon CT / 1:00 pm ET

March 30 April 27

Action Team Members

• LEADER: Kristine Hanna, Internet Archive (kristine@archive.org)
• Michael Stoller, New York University (Michael.stoller@NYU.EDU)
• Glen McAninch, Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives (Glen.McAninch@ky.gov)
• Deborah Rossum, SCOLA (drossum@SCOLA.ORG)
• Pat Steele, University of Maryland (pasteele@umd.edu)
• John Weise, University of Michigan (jweise@UMICH.EDU)
• Amy Pienta, University of Michigan/Data-PASS (apienta@umich.edu)
• Tricia Cruse, California Digital Library (patricia.cruse@ucop.edu)
• Curtis Pulford, Wisconsin Department of Administration (curtis.pulford@wisconsin.gov)
• Cathy Hartman, University of North Texas (cathy.hartman@unt.edu)
• Guest Participant: John Faundeen, US Geological Service (faundeen@usgs.gov)

If you are interesting in joining this Action Team, please contact Kristine Hanna to sign up.

Team members are asked to join the Clearinghouse Action Team Google Group. http://groups.google.com/group/ndsa-content-cat

First meeting (January 19)

Curtis Pulford:

I did want to advocate for temporal spatial data layers (particularly those the GIS community describes as ‘framework layers’) as the At Risk collection near and dear to me. I will be happy to elaborate on this at a future meeting or in writing somewhere. But the core issue is that data sets (like parcels, administrative boundaries, hydrography, transportation, etc.) are being replaced over time – without any archive. Custodians of this data are many and diverse (local, state, private) and most have no funding or mandate to store historical collections. As such, our ability to look at, or learn lessons from, our spatial data history is now (in the electronic data age) becoming impossible. People simply don’t draw maps and file them away anymore.

Glen McAninch:

I agree with Curtis that framework layers (GIS records) are at risk and should be archived. The NDIIPP sponsored GeoMAPP project (http://www.geomapp.com/) has evaluated approaches to the archiving in several states, but a national effort, including federal, state and local institutions is needed.

Pat Steele: One thought I had for getting us started on this is to pilot self-nominations of collections from the community to then assess their characteristics. This might help us determine elements and lead to criteria - just a thought to get us going.

Kristine:

Should we look at some spontaneous events as "at risk" content to save as the event unfolds on the web (Hurricane Katrina is the most familiar example)

assemble categories/types of born digital collections that are out there.

does everyone go out and find collections?

2nd meeting February 23 We set another meeting on March 8 at 10:30 am PT to categorize and organize the list below

Categories:

• 1. local government (cities, counties, muncipalities, commissions) are posting more records on their website - what should be saved? this category has a lot of breadth and depth and will start to identify specific categories
• 2. state electronic records - do we want to/need to prioritize them (some documents such as publications, some records, some are for research and others are for agency documentation) We took out the word 'permanent' for now although at some point need to adjectives to describe this type of content.

Question: do we first want to identify the content and then determine if it is state or local?

• 3. Cultural groups turning their oral history into digital formats (native americans, veterans, appalachian etc)
• 4. Science elements (GIS, geo spacial, aerial photography) federally funded is separate from universities/academia. One Geospace project is part of existing NDIPP (see #7: NC, KY, UT, and just added MO and MT)
• 5. Creative Arts (writers digital manuscripts, musicians, performance artists, painters that are working in primarily digital form)
• 6. News content that exists in digital form only (community, metro, national, citizen journalism, orphan news). this category will be broken down and better defined
• 7. Existing NDIIPP projects we want to look at and what was identified as potentially still 'at risk'.
• 8. NARA - aware of some important collections that they can share with this group. Received unofficial list from NARA courtesy of John F.. will add to wiki.
• 9. Social networking sites - what do we would want to/can we preserve? maybe specific uses of the medium (ie political or global or natural disasters or physical events). How about the evolving development/look and feel of Twitter/Facebook/Flickr etc through time
• 10.Events: spontaneous (Gulf Oil Spill) or planned (elections and Olympics). content rapidly changes and tends to disappear when event is over
• 11. Political organizations/human activity - group needs clarification
• 12. telephone directories
• 13. software
• 14. Museums and libraries with unique digital content, but with no long term preservation plan, or no funding to execute a plan.