Miguel Ángel Márdero Arellano is Cariniana Network Coordinator at IBICT and José Carlos Abbud Grácio is President of the Permanent Commission for Digital Preservation UNESP.
A network of digital preservation services
In many countries, experiences in the implementation and actions of digital preservation have aroused the interest of heritage institutions, which seek to formalize preservation strategies through policies and action plans in different infrastructure contexts and aimed at digital collections of different natures and scenarios. In Brazil, the work area of digital preservation is still little known, despite this, the practices of digitization and creation and repositories in the country converge in digital preservation actions in spaces where norms, tools and digital archiving systems are formalized.
Digital preservation in Brazil as an institutional practice is still linked to relatively restricted experiences. The perspective of expanding procedures and institutionalizing policies in this field involves the structuring of archive networks, or libraries, which contribute to disseminate technologies and support services, promote the sharing of collections and expand the possibilities of exchange between dedicated researchers to the same themes.
In Brazil, the areas that deal with information and scientific development activities do not have official channels for the identification, communication and evaluation of long-term digital preservation. Digital preservation involves, in addition to technological issues, organizational, legal and cultural elements requiring organizations to have a structure to think about policies, action plans and the implementation of actions necessary to preserve their digital objects, which need to be preserved to meet the legal issues and for being part of their memories.
Since its foundation, the IBICT has had the mission of organizing scientific production in Brazil, so the preservation of this information in digital format is another of its attributions. The transition from print to digital format with theses and dissertations and electronic periodicals favored the implementation of a digital preservation network within the Institute. Since 2010, IBICT teams have started researches and tests for the implementation of a national digital preservation network, proposing a structuring project. In 2012, the work of prospection and technological solutions and international initiatives at IBICT materialized the proposal for a digital preservation policy and the creation of a prototype of the system in the stage of testing the desired functionalities. The digital preservation policy for managing a National Digital Preservation Network was created based on a list of functional requirements to ensure the validity of records and their permanence, following the OAIS reference model. Currently, 11 Brazilian institutions with digital preservation policies follow this model.
Cariniana is composed of subnets that were structured thinking about the need to preserve the type of document and its value in terms of the links it has, whether they are scientific journals, electronic books, theses, dissertations, research data regardless of format, or database and multimedia included. Ensuring the existence of an advanced set of preservation services was considered in the creation of spaces for storing digital documents in various institutions.
The LOCKSS license acquisition operation offered IBICT participation in the development and information transfer activities within the LOCKSS International Alliance, as well as technical support for the functioning of the National Network. Due to its breadth, the project initially involved activities with six Brazilian institutions/universities with the support of their respective information centers and publishers. The implementation of the first stage of the network of digital preservation services available at IBICT included open access scientific journals from partner institutions, starting the development of a network of preserved collections that allows the free accession and integration of institutional memory content in a consortium and federated form by 14 universities and research institutions.
Since 2015, the Brazilian Network of Digital Preservation Services has been part of a select group of electronic journal archiving agencies, The Keepers Registry, an online service operated by the ISSN International Center (ISSN) that acts as a global monitor on the provisions of archiving for ongoing resources. Cariniana is the network that most preserves periodicals that are not in any other agency, thus promoting the visibility and preservation that The Keepers grants, since there are strict criteria and requirements to guarantee the participation of institutions.
In Brazil, the LOCKSS software continues to serve to establish the architecture of collaborative subnetworks for the treatment and preservation of electronic technical-scientific publications. The recognition of the importance of the LOCKSS Alliance's participation was based on the assumption that it was necessary to develop national collaborative networks that ensured not only migrations, but also the context, structure and accessibility of digital documents produced in the country, contributing to the safeguarding of our national heritage. The acceptance of a practical digital preservation solution such as LOCKSS, adopted by research institutions in Europe, Asia and North America, meant to be in line with other initiatives that have been proving the scientific value of the system, as an international standard for digital preservation.
With the Cariniana network, IBICT brought to itself the role of promoter and intermediary in the construction of this distributed infrastructure for diagnosis and preservation of important digital collections of the country's scientific and technological memory. The distributed model of digital preservation network in Brazil is already identified with those developed by the initiatives observed in the international community during the last decade, namely: the formulation of policies that involve the use of tested and adapted technologies and standards in digital collection projects.