NDSA:I can haz standards workshop notes

Meeting Notes

I Can Haz Standardz, Session #5

NDIIPP/NDSA Partners Meeting Workshop

July 20, 2011

1:45 – 3:00 pm

Presenters: Andrea Goethals and Jimi Jones

Attendees: Vickie Allen

Micah Altman

Janice Snyder Anderson

Raphael Barbau

David Brooks

Colleen Cahill

Glenn Clatworthy

Stephen Davis

Bob Downs

Lynda Schmitz Fuhrig

Helen Hockx-Yu

Nicole Joniec

Gina Jones

Charles Kolb

Bill Lefurgy

Justin Littman

Sue Manus

John Martinez

Kate Mayo

Gail McMillan

Eugene Mopsik

Steve Morris

Patricia Murphy

Kate Murray

Sone Nalensone

Michael Neubert

Shannon Niou

Kathleen O’Neill

Lesley Parilla

Meg Phillips

Deborah Rossum

Arnold Rots

Joe Servash

John Spencer

Josh Stromfeld

Aaron Trehus

Highlights

The NDSA Standards and Best Practices Working Group is working on a standards survey that has the following objectives:

• Identify and describe existing digital preservation standards and best practices

• Identify opportunities for collaboration with non-NDSA individuals and organizations who are currently working on digital preservation standards and best practices

• Identify gaps in digital preservation standards and best practices coverage that could be addressed by this working group in future activities

At the workshop, the attendees broke up into five separate groups to discuss the standards survey project and to create well-defined use cases for the standards survey project. The groups discussed who would use the survey, why they would use it, and what information would be needed. The groups entered their discussion notes into the NDSA Standards wiki and provided a quick verbal summary at the end of the meeting. The following lists are a compilation of reports from all groups:

Potential Users

• Educational community

• Content creators

• Digital content managers

• Cultural heritage organizations

• Professional organizations (SLA, ALA, AMIA, etc.)

• Tool developers

Reasons for Use:

• Digital preservation policy development

• Education and training

• Reformatting community

• Data migration

• New standards development

• Gap analysis

• Procurement processes

• Avoid duplicating work

Possible Tools

The survey currently resides in a Google Docs spreadsheet. The data is not easily searchable and becomes more unwieldy as new information is added. The groups discussed various tools that might serve as model frameworks or searchable databases.

• Expression Engine

• Drupal

• LibraryThing (model database – allows for the linking of comments about an item to that item)

• XML database, using Oxygen to develop the user interface

Useful Side Notes The working group participants came up with a variety of ideas that were out of scope for this particular meeting, but very useful nonetheless. They are presented below:

• The information will need to stay current. Who will maintain this?

• Where will this information reside, and how will users access it?

• It would be good to have a section for comments so that users can see how various formats/applications have worked for other users.

• Set up a prototype for one strict focus (A/V file formats, for example) rather than investing in everything upfront

• Add related projects to the survey tool

• Utilize the metadata model at IU to map out preservation standards

• Allow for searching by type of institutions

• Develop a survey for NDSA members (and later a wider group) to gather information about the most relevant documents and standards. The survey could be sent out every year and used to analyze trends in standards use.

Action Items This workshop started the conversation for gap analysis and further development of standards.

• Report back to the Standards Working Group about this workshop.

• Post workshop discussion notes on the Working Group wiki and share with the working group to move forward.

Google Doc: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Av48siEcvSxpdDFBcXVtZEpCamJhN2dCS1FHUmhtTlE&hl=en&authkey=CPangt4L#gid=0

Table 2

Should only list institutions that are currently using the standard

Who will maintain this? crowd? or one institution?

Is it important to know who's using the standard?

Do we purge old versions of standards - standards no one is using? (can "dead" stuff go to a separate place)

Would use this as a tool to see what exists and who is using/doing what?

"this is a project that sounds like ours and this is what they're using?" - would mean that we have to be able to search by organization

Be able to search by type of material - "x is doing y - I'm also doing y...."

Take a look at the IU - Jen Riley's metadata organization model

Relational database of some kind - LibraryThing is something we should look at. Some fields that the general user can input and others are protected

We should take a look at WordPress

Talk to Jack Brighton about Expression Engine

Table 3

Possible use cases: Digital preservation policy

Education/Training

Developing funding proposals/research

Funding organizations

Reformatting community: analog to digital

Data migration

Adoption patterns/community

New standards development

Gap analysis for developing new standards

Creating new born digital content need systems. Content must be viable over long term. Need easy to use tool. Software tool developers

Procurement process (which might mandate use of open standards)

History of digital standards

Avoiding redoing existing work

Possibly add to survey: related projects

Big issues around presentation and data input for group; usefulness depends on content staying current

Table 4

test

-- scope: descriptive? standards / guidelines / practices

-- use cases: newbie, student, new project planners, hardware purchase decisions; developers; preparing outsource specification

-- difficulty to maintain over time? distributed mode with editor? Regular request to community for updates?

-- standards in use around table: METS, PREMIS, ASE, DACS, EAD, PeDALS; Astronomy FITS; RDF;

-- what about file format standards? what about best practices for preservation and access?

-- Questions: need more use cases to justify? What about standards and practices still needed? Gap analysis?

-- use format / community-based, investigation / organization

Table 5

1. Software developers -Just need minimal information - titles, links, maybe tags -goal - need to work in aoarticular problem. Space

Useful to know if the standard is dead, still used

2. Tools Google fusion tables Freebase?