NDSA:November 18, 2013 Standards and Practices Working Group Notes

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New Members

  • Michelle Paolillo -- Cornell University Library
  • Vika Zafrin -- Boston University, Mugar Library
  • Carolyn Campbell -- Georgetown Law Library
  • Carol Kussman -- first meeting with University of Minnesota

Project Status

  • The TRAC review tool is now available at: https://www.archivematica.org/wiki/Internal_audit_tool - the download file contains all of the files needed in a standalone instance of Drupal. Now that that's done, we can focus on building up the wiki pages for the activities of the Self-assessment and Audit project.
  • PDF/A paper draft sent out on the listserv -- please send comments to Butch Lazorchak (wlaz@loc.gov) by December 2nd.

"What are you working on" -- Roundtable Discussion

  • Kate Zwaard, Library of Congress: I’m working on a few software development projects right now. The one that’s probably the most relevant here is a project I manage to help LC staff accession, preserve, and manage digital collections. We also develop Bagger and the BagIt Library. Aside from the standards and best practices of the software development world (development methodologies, code conventions, etc), the best practices we are interested in are related to preservation/administrative metadata, fixity, and provenance. One of our biggest challenges (and joys) comes from serving a diverse user base – our colleagues in the Law Library have different interests, requirements, and needs than our colleagues in the American Folklife Center or in the Manuscript division, for example. For sanity checks, we rely on our colleagues in the NDSA and in the software development community. More about our group here: http://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/2011/08/yes-the-library-of-congress-develops-lots-of-software-tools/


  • Andrea Goethals, Harvard Library: I'm working on:
    • Adding support for video to our preservation repository
      • Using various format sustainability criteria to decide on video formats, could use agreement on video formats and metadata schemas
    • Finishing up a large repository migration - now focused on the metadata migration & user adoption
      • In the software development portion of the project, used best practices on packaging metadata, technical metadata schemas, hooks into format registries
    • A road map for new Digital preservation services
      • Used repository assessment models including the levels of digital preservation
    • NDSR Boston project - testing the residency model piloted by LC & IMLS is Washington DC
      • Using existing curricula like DPOE

For sanity I turn to the digital preservation community writ large including the NDSA and the IIPC preservation working group.


  • Kate Murray, Library of Congress: I'm working on:
    • working on the MXF AS-07 application specification definition which is geared for archiving and preservation. This includes metadata standards and has led me to the SMPTE Core Metadata effort.
    • documenting case histories about working with born digital video (through the FADGI AV Working Group). We hope this eventually extends to recommended practices for file creation.
    • FADGI is also about to publish a matrix comparing codecs and wrappers for reformatted video
    • I'm also working on documenting email formats for the Sustainability of Digital Formats website


  • Leah Prescott and Carolyn Campbell - Georgetown University Law Library is:
    • We are just at the beginning of implementing a production-level digitization program so our standards and practices are primarily centered around that activity - making sure that we are following best practices and primarily using the FADGI guidelines. Books, images, audio, video, etc.
    • We are also in the process of vetting Digital Asset Management systems (along with main campus) and have started discussing preservation requirements in conjunction with that (although the system itself may not be a preservation environment)
    • Will soon be implementing a BagIt process to create a basic preservation file structure on a server - and implementing BagIt validation on a periodic basis.
    • Working on strategies to implement METS for both display and preservation
    • Beginning to work with digital forensics for obsolete media
    • Continuing to lead the Chesapeake Digital Preservation Group to deal with legal link rot


  • Michelle Paolillo - Cornell University; preservation related projects
    • We are in a fledgling state with our preservation repository, the Cornell University Library Archival Repository (CULAR). I am the service manager and business owner with regards to repository development. CULAR is governed by a steering committee which I also chair. Standards and Best practices I currently appeal to:
      • NDSA Levels of preservation - My steering committee and I are especially grateful to have a framework to use when discussing possible development, and way to keep the various facets of development in synch.
      • My metadata specialist, Jason Kovari - helps evaluate which schema(s) may be especially helpful in specific situations, and helps evaluate how much description we should minimally require. (In general, I emphasize the role of metadata frequently, since even a decade or two down the road, none of us will be here to remember or explain anything.)
      • I search the web for many terms related to preservation, to get a better idea of what has been tried, and (hopefully) to what success. It is great to learn that this group has been leveraging Wikipedia for basic knowledge.
      • Specific challenge: often curators have little idea as to how to get their collections ready for deposit (this includes appropriate description, metadata creation, structuring, weeding, etc.) I always attempt to lower barriers, but frequently encounter reluctance to create or alter workflows in ways that would integrate preservation into the lifecycle of the object. I suspect preservation is seen as an add-on. I would love ideas and best practices for developing the partnerships that would increase engagement.
    • Cornell has also recently created an executive level group for preservation called the Repository Executive Committee. Cornell has many repositories for digital assets in many repositories, and the charge before the committee includes a survey of our current repository landscape, with an eye towards simplifying the architectural diversity. I plan to be a vigorous voice on that committee for preservation. Some challenges:
      • The architectures of the various repositories tend to be optimized for whatever content type they specialize in.
      • Several architectures in use are aging out, or have already aged out. There will be migrations in our future.
      • Not all repositories have preservation in mind; many are delivery centered.
      • I am open to any sanity checks or standards/best practices that are available that would help with this effort.
  • Amy Kirchhoff
  • Butch Lazorchak
  • Carol Kussmann
  • Dina Sokolova
  • Mary Vardigan
  • Meg Phillips
  • Vika Zafrin
  • Winston Atkins
  • John Spencer
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