originally: http://www.oclc.org/research/memberscouncil/2004-02/meetingsummary.htm
The presentation focused on the economic challenges of building sustainable digital preservation solutions. Securing the long-term persistence of culturally significant digital materials is a key issue facing libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions. As institutions begin to consider practical strategies for preserving the digital materials in which they, and their users, are stakeholders, the economic challenges of digital preservation become increasingly apparent.
Brian introduced a simple framework for thinking about the economic infrastructure necessary to support sustainable digital preservation activities. The framework includes three components: responsibilities, incentives, and organization. Building sustainable digital preservation solutions requires an appropriate allocation of preservation responsibilities, sufficient incentives for decision-makers to act on these responsibilities, and strategies for organizing and using scarce preservation resources as efficently as possible. Brian discussed how the characteristics of digital materials and digital preservation create challenges in each of these areas. He then described two real-world digital preservation examples - the JSTOR access/preservation model for electronic journal content, and various efforts to preserve the World Wide Web - and discussed how each presents issues of responsibility, incentives, and organization.
The following were key points made during the discussion:
Brian's presentation is available at http://www.oclc.org/research/memberscouncil/2004-02/lavoie_mc2004.ppt (PowerPoint:87.5K/17slides).
PREMIS is a working group convened by OCLC and the Research Libraries Group to focus on implementing preservation metadata. PREMIS builds upon the work of the initial OCLC/RLG Working Group on Preservation Metadata. The goals of PREMIS are to define core preservation metadata and identify and evaluate strategies for encoding, storing, managing, and sharing.
Additional information is available on the PREMIS web site: http://www.oclc.org/research/projects/pmwg/default.htm.
Pam's presentation is available at http://www.oclc.org/research/memberscouncil/2004-02/kircher_premis.ppt (PowerPoint:1.23MB/9slides).
The Digital Library Federation (DLF) has been working with staff at OCLC to create a platform for a digital registry of digital masters. The purpose is to provide a means for libraries to coordinate their efforts to digitize materials with the goal of achieving less duplication of effort. The registry is intended to record or link to key information regarding digitization, preservation, and access. DLF's user requirements are for digitization to adhere to standards and best practices and be stored in a professionally managed way, with the intent to preserve for decades or centuries. OCLC's role is to provide digital registry participants with tools to record and/or access information about digital masters or the intent to digitize non-digital materials. The registry also includes information about rights management, technical specification of the digitization process, and other related information. The implementation of the digital registry at OCLC uses WorldCat and current MARC fields; the records become part of WorldCat. Because the digital registry will include records for both materials actually digitized, as well as materials that libraries have an "intent" to digitize, the group questioned the impact of the "intent to digitize" records on library contribution to WorldCat and membership status.
Additional information about the digital registry is located at: http://www.diglib.org/collections/reg/reg.htm.
Judy and Susan's presentation is available at http://www.oclc.org/research/memberscouncil/2004-02/cobb_dlfregistry.ppt (PowerPoint:63K/20slides).
Please send all inquiries to: Robert Bolander