Week 8 Reading Notes (Unit 9)

Margaret Hedstrom - Research Challenges in Digital Archiving and Long-term Preservation
While reading through this article, I found myself comparing the preservation of paper materials (books) to the issues concerning the preservation of digital materials. As the article mentions, non-digital materials can withstand neglect, but digital materials need constant management. This constant management requires development of new technology. Complicating the matter more, preservation of digital materials also involved issues of intellectual property rights, cost, interoperability, and sustainability. It really comes down to the value of digitization. Will the effort and cost required to overcome these hurdles equal the current and future (unknown) value of digital archives? The answer is yes.

Brian F. Lavoie - The Open Archival Information System Reference Model: Introductory Guide
This article also addresses the "immediacy of the preservation requirements associated with digital materials." However, there are efforts from those like the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) to create reference models for digital preservation. This led to the creation of the Open Archive Information System (OAIS,) which provides a model for managing digital information access, content, inclusion, and preservation planning.

However, this model is not an implementation. It does not provide an example for system architecture, information storage, or database design.

Jones, Maggie, and Neil Beagrie - Preservation Management of Digital Materials: A Handbook. 2001
This handbook was really helpful as an introduction to digital preservation terms. Although I have previously came across many of these terms, this material provides a more complete explanation. Particularly, I liked the Topic Index, which broke the contents into sections.

Justin Littman - Actualized Preservation Threats: Practical Lessons from Chronicling America
This reading detailed an actual example of the problems mentioned in Hedstrom's article. The problems that occurred fell into four categories: media failure, hardware failure, software failures, and operator errors. Again, reflecting the Hedstrom article. The most significant threat was the operator errors.

The main idea is that developing digital repository systems is difficult and time-intensive. The author admits that this beta was developed in a relatively short period of time, however the errors still provide valuable information for future endeavors.