Records Mgmt & Archiving

After some reviews about the implementation of the OAIS standard in the real world some are wondering what are the benefits of the concept over the long run:

Tenet of OAIS approach (ISO-14721)
- Self-describing / self-containing information packages contain content and contextual metadata without dependency on databases or technology through time

Pros:
• Interoperability over the long-term and economic benefits in heterogenous digital environments
• Longevity of understandability of business information independent on technology (interfaces)

Cons:
• more effort & complexity to perform
• Definition of the container to submit the package (package type, or SIP)
• Additional step prior to ingest where the database scheme is validated before submission (package)
• No (or very few) proven use cases where advantages of standardization had a substantial impact on economics or interoperability


Some experts from the DCC and DPC in UK have written about this:

After a 5-year report in 2006 (http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/briefing-papers/introduction-curation/using-oais-curation#2),
see: OAIS-REVIEW-2006 (pdf, 212 KB)

Tech watches have been written by Brian Lavoie: Digital Preservation Coalition
http://www.dpconline.org/advice/technology-watch-reports

2014: http://dx.doi.org/10.7207/twr14-02

Interesting also the chapters in the thesis of Anthea Seles from the University College of London.

http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1473881/1/Seles_Anthea_thesis.pdf

see also Foscarini: The information culture challenge: Moving beyond OAIS
https://digitalpreservationchallenges.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/foscarini.pdf

The German network for digital preservation NESTOR has just translated its "Guideline for Preservation Planning" into English

direct link: http://files.d-nb.de/nestor/materialien/nestor_mat_15-eng.pdf

Professor William H.J. Hubbard from the University of Chicago Law School recently concluded his Preservation Costs Survey and the results are now available.

go to: http://bit.ly/1lx8gnx
download of executive summary and full report (for free)

The survey “is the first, and to date only, systematic effort to measure the extent and costs of preservation activity across a broad sample of companies,” and collected data from 128 companies, “including companies of all sizes and from a broad range of industries.”
The Survey generated conservative estimates of costs that are solely attributable to preservation obligations (scheduled records).
somehow a restricted scope of ESI.

No surprise, one of the results: Preservation of email and hard drives is the most common source of problems.

Archiving of electronic records--in fact, archiving of any type of record--continues to be problematic within federal agencies, says the National Archives and Records Administration in a report drawing its conclusions based on agency self-assessments.
read more:
http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/story/electronic-records-archiving-still-problematic/2012-05-02

direct link to report: http://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/resources/self-assessment-2011.pdf

Not only in federal agencies.

Digitale Archivierung nach OAIS: Die Zukunft hat begonnen.



Archivische Arbeit zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts – eine Standortbestimmung und ein Ausblick
Beat Gnädinger, Dr. phil. I, Staatsarchivar des Kantons Zürich


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Die Überwindung der Alleingänge – Die öffentlichen Archive der Schweiz reagieren auf die Herausforderung der digitalen Archivierung mit einem Gemeinschaftswerk
Peter Hoppe, Dr. phil. I, Staatsarchivar des Kantons Zug


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Projekt «Digitale Archivierung» des Staatsarchivs des Kantons Zürich
Bernhard Rieder, lic. phil., wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter im Staatsarchiv des Kantons Zürich
Martin Kaiser, externer Berater des Staatsarchivs des Kantons Zürich


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Integrale Lösung IBM DIAS mit einem bestehenden Archivinformationssystem: Design und Demo
Raphael Mettan, IBM, Consulting Practice Manager


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Infrastrukturelle Voraussetzungen für digitale Archivierung
Michel Rosenheim, Fritz & Macziol (Schweiz) A G, Senior Key Account Manager


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Identifikation von Zusammenarbeits-/Sourcingmöglichkeiten für ein Archiv mit der IBM CBM Methode (Vortrag in Englisch)
Raymond van Diessen, M.Sc. and Ph.D., IBM SMC


see: presentations
http://www-05.ibm.com/ch/events/dlza/

The complexity necessary for long-term preservation of digital records contributes to the potential for failure. Consider the vulnerable points, colloquially known as a chain of weak links:

Gordon Hoke on KM world

Removable media—There is no way to assess the longevity of removable media, including tape and laser-written disks (CD, DVD, Blu-ray, WORM, etc.). There are too many variables. The standard way of testing media is “accelerated aging,” but only the future will prove its accuracy. There are no standards for quality, and it is difficult to impossible to consistently identify the materials and manufacturing processes that produced a shipment of disks. Controlled temperature and humidity affect the stability of a disk’s substrate and dyes, but storage environment is only half a disk’s life cycle. Even for a disk made of high-quality materials, who can verify the conditions and duration under which the disk was transported and warehoused before use?

Hardware obsolescence is obvious and visible to all who have reached adulthood. Floppy disk drives (5.25-in. or 3.5-in.) are difficult to find, to say nothing of players for ZIP, Jazz and other proprietary format media. In 1991, Sony advertised a 12-in. optical disk guaranteed to last 99 years. While the verity of that claim will be revealed in 2090, not even museums are likely to have a compatible disk player.

As operating systems evolve, they have limited compatibility with their ancestors. Can a PC running Windows 7 read files created under CP/M? Can today’s IBM Power System OS consistently extract files written on a s/38 from 1979 or a system/3 from 1969?

Application software becomes obsolete as well. Consider the boneyard of former market leaders: VisiCalc, WordStar, Wang word processing and countless others. Microsoft stopped supporting Office 97 about 10 years after its release.

Output drivers—Retrieving old records also depends on being able to display and/or print content. Even with legacy CPUs, OSes and application software, the period monitors, printers and the software that drives them may be unavailable or inoperable.

Encryption and password protection—Long-lived records, including health records, often require security and privacy protection. Maintenance of passwords and decryption capabilities loom as additional impediments to the retrieval of old records.

KEEP (Keeping Emulation Environments Portable) will develop an Emulation Access Platform to enable accurate rendering of both static and dynamic digital objects: text, sound, and image files; multimedia documents, websites, databases, videogames etc.

The overall aim of the project is to facilitate universal access to our cultural heritage by developing flexible tools for accessing and storing a wide range of digital objects.

see: Homepage

Final Report of the „Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access":

see:
http://brtf.sdsc.edu/biblio/BRTF_Final_Report.pdf

Dr. Krystyna W. Ohnesorge
Schweiz. Bundesarchiv, Bern

Go and see the table of content

Link:
http://www.ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc

Das deutsche Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI) hat
die neuen technischen Richtlinien betr. Langzeitarchivierung veröffentlicht.


BSI Richtlinien