NDSA:Content WG July 24, 2012 Meeting Minutes

NDSA Content Working Group Meeting

DigitalPreservation 2012 Session Notes

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

10:45 a.m.

Attendees: Abbie Grotke (Library of Congress), Cathy Hartman (UNT Libraries), Deborah Rossum (SCOLA), Rachel Frick (CLIR/DLF), Joel Wurl (NEH), Ben Fino-Radin (Rhizome), Jason Gish (Testronic Labs), Brett Abrams (NARA), Christie Moffatt (NLM), John Powell (NARA), Lois Widmer (UF), Linda Tadic (A/V Archive Network), Linda Reib (Arizona State Archives), David Brooks (LC), Tim Baker (Maryland State Archives), Glen McAninch (KY Dep’t for Libraries & Archives), Anne Harrison (LC/FEDLINK), David Kepley (NARA), Bob Horton (IMLS), Bill LeFurgy (LC/NDIIPP), Michael Stoller (NYU), Katrina Stierholz (Federal Reserve Bank), Amber Paranick (LC), Rachel Howard (Univ. of Louisville), David Kirsch (UMD)

Draft Scope Statement

Previous work related to developing a registry of content and clearinghouse of stakeholders.

Draft scope statement: Form “content teams” grouped in topical areas (government, geospatial, etc.) and develop case study to engage stakeholders in the preservation of content.

What are we trying to accomplish? Preserve content for which there is an identified need that no one institution is responsible for. We rely on contacts of NDSA members to identify at-risk content.

Some members hesitant to say that they have resources to share to preserve valuable content. Purposes of case studies is to move beyond identifying at-risk content to identifying challenges and stakeholders of preserving identified content.

Suggestion: describe nature of collaboration with other NDSA working groups—when do they bring in expertise?

Michael Stoller: “What we do is connect content with the people who can help preserve it, in one way or another.”

Jason Gish: “In the TV world, we know what’s at risk. It’s deciding what in a storage facility should and can be preserved.”

Framework of digital curation life cycle. InterPARES chapter on appraisal for digital objects. This working group can build on [modules of?] content and appraisal.

One dimension is bringing in perspectives of stakeholder of consumer. We can serve as a conduit to those kinds of communities of interest in content to help custodians of content to determine value. We don’t necessarily need to represent this explicitly in draft scope, but case studies especially should be cognizant of the domains we’re serving.

In archives, established record schedules; in other areas, no such government record schedules. However, some schedules are quite general and could apply to other content areas—as a starting point.

Archival appraisal priorities not just based on budgetary resources, but also on difficulty of managing content: in what sense is a database a record?

Jason Gish: Case studies could demonstrate that entry-level cost of preservation isn’t prohibitive, to help to make the argument to the people who write the checks.

About finding partners, some of whom have existing infrastructure that could perform archival function on behalf of stakeholders.

Rachel Frick: Importance of case studies is to develop compelling stories to demonstrate value of digital preservation.

Once we have case studies, we can put them out for comment and sharing, we can do more case studies, and then we’ll begin to see the impact.

How NDSA collaborates with other institutions

WordPress

Abbie gave a brief update; no news from Wordpress folks so Internet Archive is going to propose an IIPC project to possibly get funding for development.

DPLA

Update from Rachel Frick of CLIR/DLF and chair of DPLA Content & Scope workstream

DPLA not a “thing” but a movement.

6 workstreams: Content & Scope, Audience & Participation, Governance, Legal Issues, Financial/Business Models, Technical Aspects.

Content & Scope team asks questions such as how to leverage existing content for broader use. Aggregated metadata model, eventually harvesting of content (full digital objects). Focus has been on access and discovery rather than preservation. When we talk about preservation, they acknowledge that NDSA is working on this problem—a point for partnership. Don’t want to duplicate the work of NDSA. Encouraging/requiring DPLA “content hubs” to be NDSA members (e.g. green/silver/gold partners)? Shared feeling in group that technology is easy; governance and relationships are hard. Leverage network built by NDSA with DPLA. How do you formalize that coordination?

DPLA moving toward 501(3)c non-profit, hiring executive director and a few additional hires.

Listservs are open, wiki is open, all meetings are open and also broadcast.

At last plenary meeting in San Francisco (DPLA West), questions were asked about how to coordinate work groups so that we don’t duplicate effort or contradict decisions in other work groups? DPLA hired project manager to coordinate Content & Scope and Technical Aspects --> case studies around users: not only end users, but also cultural heritage organizations and academic libraries, etc. Case studies provide common vision around which to scope effort. Also a vehicle for people to express what they want from the DPLA. One lesson to pass onto NDSA from DPLA experience: case studies --> common vision and what people want.

dp.la/use-cases/#

Joel Wurl: Important to build bridges between these two enterprises, NDSA and DPLA. To bifurcate preservation and access is unnatural. Building integration will be crucial, even if it’s not a formal organization outcome.

Rachel Frick: Nothing breaks trust like bad 404 links. What does it take to provide consistency of service? What are the expectations and obligations of hubs that provide data to aggregated metadata services? What are the characteristics of good data hubs? Solid preservation is one of those characteristics.

Updates from content teams

Cultural history content group

Case study: oral traditions and at-risk Native American languages in U.S. Trust and trustworthiness key to access to materials and securing relationships with people who would provide materials: who “owns” access, Native American language. An agenda item for next all-group call.

Government content group

Documents added to wiki, including at-risk statement.

Science, mathematics, technology, and medicine group

Meeting at LC about at-risk science, which will provide good ideas for developing case studies. Blog summary on The Signal.

News content group

Finding time to meet. Nothing new to report.

Arts content group

No report out. We talked briefly about recruiting other museums, arts orgs to join (Smithsonian, maybe?)

Geospatial content group

Nothing to report.

Action Items

Draft scope statement

• Nature of collaboration with other NDSA working groups
• Content consumer as stakeholder
• Case studies as storytelling tools

How NDSA Collaborates with other institutions

• Build bridges between NDSA and DPLA

Case Studies

Content teams should continue to draft case studies. Could we have one from each group by end of 2012?