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Business continuity procedures – UK Data Archive, University of Essex
This case note was developed in 2015 as part of the work for the 2nd edition of the Digital Preservation Handbook.
Business Continuity planning and practice involves organizations proactively preparing for potential incidents and disruptions in order to avoid suspension of critical operations and services, or if operations and services are disrupted, that they resume operations and services as rapidly as required by those who depend on them. The development and use of a business continuity plan based on sound principles, endorsed by senior management, and activated by trained staff will greatly reduce the likelihood and severity of impact of disasters and incidents. It is an important component of ensuring bit preservation and makes a significant contribution to digital preservation through this.
The Data Archive is the UK national data centre for the Social Sciences funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The Archive holds certification to ISO 27001, the international standard for information security, which requires information security continuity to be embedded in an organisation's business continuity management systems. The digital storage system at the Data Archive is based, for security purposes, on segregated and distributed storage and access. Business continuity at the Data Archive is based around the resilience provided by creating multiple copies of the data and specified recovery procedures, alongside pre-emptive failure prevention. Each file from any dataset has at minimum three copies. The Archive also creates a read only archival copy of each study and any update as it is made available on the system.
Assessing long term access from short term digitization projects
Appropriate and timely examination of the digital preservation plans of digitization projects can have a lasting impact. Projects may not know or understand the risks they run. Simple assessment can help them identify and address these risks sooner rather than later.
Digitization projects often - and sensibly - start by establishing and meeting the needs of a modern user community and are mostly funded over a short term. But the outputs from digitization projects are likely to be valuable in the long term, so how can we take steps to make the outputs of digitization robust in the long term? This case note reports some work undertaken by the University of London Computer Centre in assessing the long term plans of 16 digitization projects, providing a basic survey tool to help funders and project managers alike to relfect on the long term preservation plans.
Practical Preservation: West Yorkshire Archive Service accepts a digital collection
Nobody has the perfect answer to digital preservation for every case. If we try we may fail; if we don’t try we will certainly fail.
Digital Preservation can be intimidating for organizations which have previously been used to managing and collecting paper archives. In this case note, staff from West Yorkshire Archives Service report on their experience in taking their first large digital archive. This made them confront new problems and new ways of working, they conclude that If we try we may fail; if we don’t try we will certainly fail.
Small Steps - Long View: how a museum service turned an oral history headache into an opportunity
The benefits of digital preservation can be expressed in terms of new opportunities they create in the short and long term. Even relatively simple steps can bring early rewards if properly embedded within the mission of an organization.
This case note examines Glasgow Museums' approach to its large and growing digital collections. It describes how some simple steps in addressing digital preservation have created short and long term opportunities for the museums. They used some very traditional simple and well know approaches - creating an inventory, assessing significance and promoting access - as the basis for building confidence to manage the wider challenges they face.
ASR2: Using METS to keep data and metadata together for preservation
Long-term access is improved when content and metadata are wrapped in a single package. In this way data managers will be able to access technical and administrative information with the content. The METS standard can help achieve this.
This case note examines the 'Archival Sound Recordings 2' project from the British Library, noting that one of the challenges for long term access to digitised content is to ensure that descriptive information and digitised content are not separated from each other. The British Library has used a standard called METS to prevent this.
Welsh Journals Online: Effective Leadership for a Common Goal
Long-term access often requires co-operation from many staff. There is a risk that responsibilities are unclear. Consequently it is important that a senior member of staff is charged with delivering an organization’s digital preservation strategy.
This case note examines a complex digitisation project at the National Library of Wales from the perspective of the organisation. There are many parties with an interest in digital preservation and many different skills are required. This creates a risk which can be managed where an organisation is clear about where responsibility lies for preservation actions. The solution in this case was to nominate a single senior member of staff as the lead officer for digital preservation and allowing them to work across different sections of the institution to achieve a shared goal.
Cabinet Papers: Policy as a Measure of Commitment
Digital preservation policies indicate whether an organization is committed to long-term access. Grant giving organizations should request copies of applicant’s digital preservation policies when funding data creation.
In this case note we examine the relationship between policy and practice in digital preservation. The National Archives has digitised a significant volume of the UK's Cabinet Papers, using techniques and practices that they have developed over many years. It has considerable expertise in digital preservation. However the measure of their commitment to long term preservation is not so much their undoubted expertise so much as their carefully considered policy framework for the long term management of digital resources. Funders often ask to see policy documents in assessing grant applications: for digitisation grants, or other grants likely to create prolific amounts of new and valuable digital content, it is reasonable to assess their digital preservation policies.
Freeze Frame: Preservation Partnerships
Partnership is a critical success factor for long term access to data from small or short-lived projects. This depends on a thoughtful dialogue between the project team and their preservation partner. Thorough documentation will be required.
In this case note we examine the relationship between the relatively short lived Freeze Frame project at the Scott Polar Research Institute and the institutional repository which offered to provide long term preservation services to ensure ongoing access at the end of the project. This study shows that small organisations don't necessarily need to establish a sophisticated preservation infrastructure when they embark on digitisation and that partnerships need need to be managed but can bring unexpected benefits to both parties.
iPRES 2016 Blog - Digital Art Preservation
Following on from Sabine Himmelsbach’s excellent introduction to digital art conservation at the key note, the theme was continued with the morning’s first session.
Towards a Risk Model for Emulation-based Preservation Strategies: A Case Study from the Software-based Art Domain
The first session was presented by Klaus Rechert from the University of Freiburg in Germany.
The British Library has worked with Freiburg and the Emulation as a Service product, so it was interesting to have the opportunity to hear more about the workings and developments of emulation from their point of view. After a brief history of emulation, Klaus confirmed that despite great progress, emulation and virtualisation aren't quite there yet.
Of the major issues to resolve, the scalability is now mostly solved but sustainability and the long-term plans are not yet in place.
He went on to discuss a case study of software-based artworks with the goal of the project to highlight preservation risks of the emulation strategy. The computer system is the part that changes and that is where the emulation comes in.
External dependencies include artefact description & configuration, software environment & configuration and hardware environment. The key preservation risk is when the hardware or equivalent becomes obsolete which it where the emulation strategy is focussed. Acquisition and preparation is an analysis of what is available. You need to determine the environment and factors. If you don't have the environment, build one!
It also important to identify dependencies and whilst the dependent software may not change, the licensing does!
What the setup looks like!
iPRES 2016 Blog - Panel: Software Sustainability and Preservation
Paul Young has been Digital Archivist at the National Archives for just over a year, dealing with the ingest of Born-Digital records and undertaking file format research for PRONOM.
Paul attended iPRES 2016 with support from the DPC's Leadership Programme. This blog is part of a series produced by scholarship recipients who attended iPRES 2016.