NDSA:Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Infrastructure Working Group Call, January 31, 2012, 2pm-3pm

Attending

• Trevor Owens, Library of Congress
• Karen Cariani, WGBH
• Dave MacCarn, WGBH
• Jefferson Bailey, Library of Congress
• Aaron Trehub, Auburn University
• Mitch Brodsky, NY Philharmonic
• John Spenser, BMS Chase
• Martin Jacobson, NARA
• Michael Sterling, Academy of Motion Pictures
• Corey Snavely, University of Michigan
• Micah Altman, Harvard University (soon to be MIT)
• Nicole Scalessa, Library Company of Philadelphia
• Dean Farrell, UNC
• Elizabeth Perkes, Utah State Archives
• Bob Downs, Columbia University
• Joe Pawletko, NYU
• Dan Dodge, Thompson Reuters
• Priscilla Caplan, FCLA
• Andrea Goethels, Harvard University
• Linda Tadic, Audiovisual Archive Network
• Shawn Nicholson, Michigan State
• Martin Halbert, UNT

Agenda

• Update on Storage Report activities
• Discussion of our OSS project
• Update on other NDSA WG activities

Storage Report

• Two posts have been published on the NDIIPP blog highlighting and analyzing results from the NDSA storage survey.
• Access: http://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/2011/12/diversity-of-access-to-digital-preservation-collections-first-results-from-the-ndsa-storage-survey/
• Cloud: http://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/2012/01/partly-cloudy-trends-in-distributed-and-remote-preservation-storage-more-results-from-the-ndsa-storage-survey/
• Three more are planned: one (in draft form now) on fixity, one on administrative/managerial complexities, and one summary post that can also included any stats/results that didn’t fall into the previous four posts.
• We are still tossing around ideas for the form of a final product from this project, so ping the list if you have ideas or would like to be involved in that effort.

OSS Project

Discussion:

• We are continuing to brainstorm on potential questions and who exactly to pose them to as far as decision-making around open-source software use for digital preservation.
• There is still a lack of clarity on who we want to invite to comment and how we proceed developing question.
• One idea is to develop questions for ourselves first (meaning the working group), then refine the question, then post to the NDSA membership (much like the storage survey).
• Would also be useful to talk to folks who are experts or have experience in this area to tease out issues before writing questions.
• Are our questions around decision-making for using, or for participating in and contributing to projects?
• One potential approach is to look at thinks like Lyasis’ FLOSS project and other the other resources on the wiki. Then we can comment on what features or formats we like from those materials materials.
• We need to figure out the scope of the questions -- should we make distinctions between types of software (there’s a difference between file-renaming software and a full repository) – what’s our focus?
• One use-case: enterprise tools for long-term access/preservation. That is a decision that involves a different time horizon (for long-term preservation in memory institutions) than a commercial, enterprise-wide solution.
• Also the case of OSS on top of commercial piece (combination of build, buy, and adopt).
• Also the case of “commercial open source” which is increasingly prevalent, underlying OSS but with pay-for features or support or implementation on top of it.
• It would work best to hone the focus before we begin thinking of questions and/or communities/institutions to query.

Innovation news

• Innovation members are planning on participating in the Google Summer of Code project. If any Infrastructure members would like to take part (which involves mentoring a student developer/programmer who will write code for an open-source software project), contact Jefferson or Trevor and we will provide more info on the project & requirements.
• Innovation Awards: the annual awards program will be announced soon and more information will be disseminated NDSA-wide. Please make, and encourage others to make, nominations for people, projects, institutions, or students/educators demonstrating innovation in the field of digital preservation and stewardship.

Standards

• There is a “wiki project” in development to document digital preservation standards and guidelines on Wikipedia
• Another project is to conduct a staffing survey to see how institutions have staffed themselves for digital preservation: numbers of employees, organizational structure, skills expected of employees/job applications, their ideal staffing levels, their projected staffing levels, etc. The survey will be of both the NDSA community and external institutions
• Another project is to conduct a survey of what standards are currently in use around digital preservation tasks at NDSA institution and then track this information over time to determine trends, etc.

Outreach

• Creating “digital preservation in a box” a collection of resources for digital preservation
• Storytellers series, which collects unique or evocative stories about digital preservation

Content

• Working with WordPress to develop an “opt-in” plug-in which blog creators can activate to note their content is available/allowable for harvesting.

Action items

• Trevor/Micah will write a short, one paragraph statement scoping out a baseline description for considering OSS when building digital preservation infrastructure for long-term access & preservation.
• The group will review text posted to the wiki and comment over the listserv.
• The group will continue reviewing, commenting on, and adding to the OSS resources currently posted to the wiki, especially anything that provides a good example or model of what we hope to provide.
• Related: The Digital Dilemma 2 paper is now available for download
• Next call will be Tuesday, February 28, 2012 at 2pm EST