Duurzame toegang (long-term access)
Inge Angevaare's blog over duurzame toegang tot digitale informatie in Nederland en daarbuiten
Blog of the coordinator of the Dutch Digital Preservation Coalition NCDD
zaterdag 17 december 2011
This blog has moved / Deze blog is verplaatst
or directly to the weblog, new url: http://www.ncdd.nl/blog/
Per 15 december 2011 is deze blog met archief en al verplaatst naar de NCDD website, nieuwe url: http://www.ncdd.nl
of direct near het weblog, nieuwe url: http://www.ncdd.nl/blog/
donderdag 8 december 2011
DISH2011 wrap up: the digital shift and us (DISH 4)
‘In many ways, digital surrogates are more useful, more accessible and more robust than physical objects. That is deeply upsetting for people who have dedicated their entire lives to collecting and maintaining physical objects.’
‘There are many more opportunities now for users to engage and to participate. Sometimes user impact is quite trivial, but it can also be very profound. For a lot of content, there is somebody out there who knows much more about it than we do and he is able to get in touch with us. Just think of the vast volumes of audiovisual content from our living memory. But user generated content does raise issues of trust: to what extent will we, memory organizations, be able or willing to vouch for this content?’ And there is more, ‘These participants may want to contribute more than just tags, they may bring us their own archives, expecting that there should be a place for the memories of all of us.’
So the question becomes: are we adapting to this new environment? I attended a workshop session on 'national infrastructures' and heard Marco de Niet of the DEN Foundation say: 'We should have done this ten years ago.' He was commenting on Dutch plans to use the Europeana structure and tools to aggregate content from a variety of Dutch institutions on one discovery platform. They call it the 'Netherlands Cultural Heritage Collection' - but really, it is metadata only and, if we are lucky, we will get some thumb nails. A workshop attendee asked the critical question: "Will our users be satisfied with just metadata?" Joyce Ray of the US IMLS figured that no-one would be able to find the money to aggregate the content as well.
But should such practicalities stop us from making bold moves?
In order to give us a sense that all of this is doable, the conference organizers had contracted strategist Michael Edson of the US Smithsonian Institution to give us a final pep talk the American way. His advice: stop thinking and talking in terms of ‘the future’. The pace of innovation is so quick now that we simply cannot spend months or even years talking about strategy. Because if we do, we will fail to recognize the things about digital culture that we can bank on now. In other words: ‘It is all a matter of going boldly into the present.’ Strategy should do work. It is a tool. (The text of his entire speech is on slideshare (edsonm).
Michael Edson |
This is what Edson offered to take with us into the office this Monday morning:
I would say: good luck to all of us!
Grabbing digital preservation by the roots - #DISH2011, 3
Karin van der Heiden (right) with Job Meihuizen of Premsela. |
If you think that this is perhaps too basic a level, just remember this: more and more digital content is being produced outside the sphere of influence of heritage institutions. Can you see the boxes of junk coming your way in 10 or 20 years' time and the troubles and expense they will cause? Educating everybody is therefore important to all of us. Karin's mission is to make basic preservation measures doable, enable designers, artists, researchers and everybody else to easily integrate basic measures into their workflow:
Great stuff. I'll let you know when the US edition becomes available.
Playing the 'digital lifecycle game' #DISH2011, 2
Rony Vissers (Packed, Belgium) searching for answers |
Shawn Day, Digital Humanities, seems to feel the threat |
woensdag 7 december 2011
Are heritage institutions 'living the digital shift'? #DISH2011, 1
The conference covers many angles of the digital shift, but obviously I will be on the lookout for sessions and papers dealing with long-term access. Having that focus makes it easier to make choices at this conference, which boasts three blocks of no fewer than fifteen (!) simultaneous parallel sessions - which means you always miss 14/15th of what's on offer. That's a lot to miss, and somebody tweeted: I hope the three plenary keynote presentations make up for the 'sacrifice'.
Amber Case, 'living the digital age', despite her admittedly 'analogue' upbringing. 'In my own back yard, I understood the limits of my mental and physical capabilities.' |
Chair Chris Batt with a breakdown of the audience of more than 300 attendees, 75% (my estimate) from the Netherlands |
maandag 5 december 2011
Een "infrastructuur": wat is dat en hoe bouw je het?
Hoe vlieg je zoiets groots aan? De ene methode is de deltaplanmethode: grootschalig, hoog-boven-over. In polderland Nederland zie je zoiets maar zelden. Dan moet het water ons écht aan de lippen staan, zoals in 1953 letterlijk gebeurde. Voor de duurzame bruikbaarheid van onze digitale bestanden is zo een beweging (nog) niet tot stand gekomen. Wij (zeg maar, informatieprofessionals) weten wel van de tijdbom die onder onze digitale informatie tikt, maar die urgentie wordt nog lang niet door alle bestuurders als dringend ervaren.
- Opslag (het betrouwbaar en vooral zo efficiënt mogelijk opslaan van de bits en de bytes, inclusief netwerkverbindingen)
- Preservering (wat moeten we nu precies doen om die duurzaamheid te waarborgen - monitoren van de ontwikkelingen (preservation watch), plannen van preserveringsacties, de softwaretools die je daarvoor nodig hebt, R&D, en vooral veel kennis)
- Afstemming collectiebeleid (digitale informatie laat zich lastig vangen in de traditionele taakverdeling tussen instellingen, daar moet je nieuwe afspraken over maken)
- Kwaliteitszorg en certificering (wanneer is een archief een 'trustworthy digital repository'? Hoe bewijs je dat?)
Aan mij de eer om al dit werk te ondersteunen vanuit de NCDD, en ik kan je zeggen, de werkgroepen hebben het niet gemakkelijk. Duurzame toegankelijkheid is een jong vak met heel veel onzekerheden. Wie kan voorspellen wat voor computers we over 10 of 20 jaar zullen hebben? Wie durft te voorspellen hoe snel het web blijft groeien? Wie durft te selecteren wat we wel en niet moeten bewaren? Wie durft er vandaag definitief te zeggen wat de beste duurzaamheidsstrategie is? En hoe zit het met alle bestuurlijke en juridische complicaties?
Ga er maar aan staan. Niettemin zijn we vol goede moed aan het werk gegaan. Er wordt hersenkrakend nagedacht en geschreven. Ideeën worden geopperd en soms weer van tafel geveegd. Om soms later opnieuw op te duiken als andere alternatieven niet haalbaar zijn gebleken.
Maar we hebben hulp nodig. Van jullie. Daarom organiseren we:
NCDD symposium "Bouw een huis voor ons digitaal geheugen",
24 januari 2012, KB, Den Haag, 10.30 u tot 16.30 u, toegang gratis, wél even aanmelden
Programma en aanmelden op http://ncddsymposium.eventbrite.com.
woensdag 30 november 2011
Digital preservation basics in four online seminars
If you are new to digital preservation, you may want to check out four ‘webinars’ organized by the California State Library and the California Preservation Program. The one-hour webinars promise to give you a basic understanding of what digital preservation is all about, of interest especially to librarians and archivists who are involved in developing digital projects.
The first webinar is scheduled for December 8, 12 PM Pacific time (which is 21.00 hrs in Holland). Topics include: ‘storing digital objects, choosing and understanding risks in file formats, planning for migration and emulation, and the roles of metadata in digital preservation.’ See http://infopeople.org/training/digital-preservation-fundamentals.