NDSA:Tuesday, Jan 28, 2014

Roster

• Trevor Owens, Library of Congress
• Karen Cariani, WGBH
• Barrie Howard, Library of Congress
• Carol Kussmann, University of Minnesota
• Dave MacCarn, WGBH
• Jim Harper, PFA Inc.
• Linda Tadic, Audiovisual Archive Network
• Joe Pawletko, New York University
• Martin Jacobson, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
• Shawn Nicholson, Michigan State University
• Kevin McCarthy, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
• Martin Kong, Chicago State University
• Chelcie Rowell, Wake Forest University
• Kat Bell, Dance Heritage Coalition
• Quyen Nguyen, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
• Gail Truman, Truman Technologies

Agenda

1. Discuss the below revised fixity check project draft. (This has been worked over and revised substantially since the last discussion in a small sub group.) With some tweaking, it is at the point where a beta version of it can be released for broader comment.
2. Review the open source infrastructure project talks/interviews from last year. Karen may send along a document trying to distill some of that work before the call.
3. Short update on the NDSA storage survey
4. Open suggestions for projects/programs/etc. to invite to present to the group. (Start thinking about these before the call if you have a few minutes.)
5. Kick off thinking about digital stewardship infrastructure issues to feature in the 2015 National Agenda for Digital Stewardship.

Action Items

• Recommend what call the document, update it, and distribute to a larger group to solicit feedback and broader input - Trevor
• Create a Google Doc and use it to identify cross-cutting themes to bring the four past presentations together more thematically in prepartion for a blog post - Trevor, Chelcie, Joe, Karen
• Identify projects and speakers on digital preservation infrastructure for future calls - All
• Think of ideas to include in the 2015 National Agenda - All

Discussion

The fixity document has had a fair amount of comments on email. The document may not be appropriate for people that aren't familiar with specific terms. Is there a way to make it more accessible to people not that versed in digital preservation? Perhaps a brief intro document that links readers who require more information to resources with more in-depth coverage of a specific term. At least add a sentence to briefly define each PREMIS and TRAC, especially PREMIS because we lean on it as a definition up front. The intro information could link off to the Levels of Preservation, and other resources. There should be some language addressing how the data to be preserved was created and workflow information, and something on the kind of data you should keep about your fixity check like the tools you used, when the data was checked, the results, and what algorithm used. Where will this document live, and what is this document, e.g., a factsheet or a guidance document? Trevor will refer to a grey literature guide to recommend what call the document, update it, and distribute to a larger group to solicit feedback and broader input.

Joe and Karen tried to pull together a summary of the four talks, i.e., Islandora, Hydra, Archivematica and Open Planets, but they were all very different. There were some themes, e.g., open source as an ecosystem and the intersection of staffing and open source platforms. The goal was to attempt to pull out some cross-cutting themes to bring the presentations together more thematically, and publish a blog post on what the working group learned. The workng group decided they wanted to have these themed presentations together, although each presentation received a dedicated blog post on The Signal. Trevor, Chelcie, Joe, and Karen will attempt to work on this, and share via Google Doc before they bring it back to the larger group.

We've been chasing down a few stray respondants, who did not respond to the storage survey. After that is completed, then we'll have something to share with the greater group. This should happen in the near future.

Are there projects that relate to digital preservation infrastructure that you think people should know about? It would be good to invite people from these projects to talk. Fedora 4 was recently released, and someone can talk about the improvements to Fedora 4. Open Stack is an OSS for running your own cloud compute system. There is a move to develop a public media platform, and there is a lot of talk aobut it. Karen can search around to see if someone can talk about it. It may be more about access than preservation, and more DPLA-ish than HathiTrust-ish? What about DPN? Ladd Hanson, University of Texas, and Tom Cramer, Stanford University, are DPN Team members. Katherine Skinner, Educopia Institute, can talk about MetaArchive that may address the needs of small- to medium-sized institutions with limited resources. Brad Westbrook could talk about ArchivesSpace. Email Trevor with any other suggestions as they occur to you.

The Coordinating Committee has requested that working groups begin discussing the update to the National Agenda. Are there any infrastructure issues that should be elevated to the national level. The Internet Archive and Olive Library have launched emulation environments, which take emulation from the research phase to implementation phase. Funding preservation activities and modles for long-term sustainabilty on a national level to raise awareness of the expense of long-term preservation. Managing and monitoring the health of your data. Metrics on what it takes for forward migration within specific storage environments, and spelling out benchmarking for format migration. File based fixity checks and frame level fixity checks remain the same, but what about when you change formats?

Documents

File:NDSA Fixity Check Project Concept Draft v6 5.pdf