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My eroding realities

Alternative facts are the cliché du jour but let me pitch a problem that is categorically larger: alternative realities. Not just alternative, but alternative and obsolete realities. I spoke about this at a DPC briefing day at the end of 2016 – which already seems a life time ago. It was a surprisingly hard programme to assemble because there is precious little evidence that those involved in producing 3d data sets for the cultural heritage sector have any capacity – and in many cases no evident concern – to ensure the accessibility of their virtual realities outside of tightly constrained and poorly documented delivery mechanisms. Therefore, in relatively short order and despite much rhetoric to the contrary, interactions degrade, effort is wasted and new kinds of cultural disenfranchisement are engineered. 3d data faces – it already has – an endemic crisis of obsolescence, resource discovery and corporate abandonment.

This blog is a cry for help. I want to be wrong. I want to be corrected and contradicted on the assumption that there must be a better story. Some clever and generous person is going to collate and deploy the evidence to show how the 3d data community has a concern and the capacity to ensure a longer-term viability to their virtual realities. They will gently take the megaphone off me and reassure me that the tremendous opportunities associated with 3d data are being met with a commensurate capability to preserve them.

Roughly weekly/monthly news and opinions from the Digital Preservation Coalition’s Head of Research and Practice, Paul Wheatley. Opinions are the opinions of Paul and those featured. Not the DPC. They’re just opinions, ok? Just because the blog has moved to the official DPC website does not mean this isn't just a load of opinions. Back issues are here.

Part 2: Uploading

The National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre, National Galleries of Scotland and the Digital Preservation Coalition are working together on a project called Cloudy Culture to explore the potential of cloud services to help preserve digital culture. This is one of a number of pilots under the larger EUDAT project, funded through Horizon2020.

We’ve already published a friendly introduction to Cloudy Culture and our second report focuses on uploading data. It will describe in detail how the National Library of Scotland is transferring data into a cloud service provided by Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre using iRODS data management software (https://irods.org). The use of a web API uploader is also provided by EPCC and compared with iRODS.  We want to know how easily, quickly and reliably we can transfer cultural data into the cloud. Is there anything that would dissuade us from using the cloud as a way to help us preserve access to the digital culture the Library is responsible for safeguarding? Can other organisations apply what we’ve learned to the content they’re responsible for?

Over the last three years, the partners of the E-ARK Project have worked together to develop and test specifications and tools for the creation and management of information packages for preservation. Around this work they have also been busily undertaking complementary research and resource creation, resulting in a wide variety of new and improved practical solutions for those undertaking digital preservation activities.

On a crisp, cold day at the beginning of December 2016, we gathered at the beautiful main building of the National Archives of Hungary in Budapest (see right) to share the results of all that hard work at our final conference. I was there on behalf of the DPC and, even as a member of the project team, I was impressed by the scope and quality of the work shared during the event.

In this blog post, through the medium of the Tweets we sent out into the wild over the two days, I hope to share some of the highlights from presentations given at the conference. The tools, resources and solutions they mention will be of interest to many DPC members and friends. More information on all the E-ARK resources mentioned below can be found on the project website: http://www.eark-project.eu.

Roughly weekly/monthly news and opinions from the Digital Preservation Coalition’s Head of Research and Practice, Paul Wheatley. Opinions are the opinions of Paul and those featured. Not the DPC. They’re just opinions, ok? Just because the blog has moved to the official DPC website does not mean this isn't just a load of opinions. Back issues are here.

Welcome to a new era. Post-truth. Alternative facts. The 2017 that the pretty awful 2016 appears to have just been a gentle warm up for. And I suspect it's going to get pretty hot. As Terry Pratchett once said - there is light at the end of the tunnel, but it's a flamethrower.  But fear not dear reader. Although the DPC has a brand spanking new website to which Digital Preservation News has moved, the usual pedantry, gentle snark and (hopefully) useful digipres news is not going anywhere.

In uncertain times, some stability and permanence is reassuring. In a post-truth era, it's absolutely vital. So, my digipres friends, we've got our work cut out. Let's go to it...

Ancient history: how we got here

Way back in 2013 the DPC collaborated with the OPF on a project called SPRUCE. Following on from the success of another little project called AQUA, and with some very handy funding from the Jisc, we ran a bunch of mashup events and got hands on with all sorts of digital preservation challenges. The management of PDF files, and particularly risk assessment, was a recurring theme. In response, the SPRUCE project held a hackathon in Leeds where a host of DP geeks came up with a basic proof of concept for a PDF risk checker. Based on PDFBOX – a PDF/A validator – and with denizens of both Yorkshire and Canada in the room (plus a variety of other nationalities) it seemed entirely appropriate to call it PDF/Eh? For those unfamiliar with Yorkshire dialect, this probably won't help but is recommended nonetheless. A number of important elements (that would surface again in the future) were brought together at this hackathon, but the participants recognised that this would take a much bigger push and a dedicated project to do it "properly".

PDF is a preservation problem almost everyone has. It's certainly not the biggest problem out there, but it needs some work and it's a little surprising that as a community we haven't managed to nail it. PDF/A is beginning to form part of the solution but a standard needs to be adequately supported with tools. That's where veraPDF comes in.

Inaugurations

By coincidence I find myself working from home on the day a new US president is inaugurated. The coincidence: the last time an American president took office I was also working from home. Speeches and punditry burble through the kitchen radio as I hammer out a few more lines of something at the dining table. Same radio, same pundits, same table, very different presidents.   A different William too I suppose, mostly the effect of acquiring two children and a dog but also the result of completing 8 years at the DPC.  The DPC is very different, too, now.  So I find myself in reflective mood, considering the distances travelled and the road to come. 

I joined the DPC not long after Barrack Obama moved into the White House.  I moved my few boxes into that tiny office in HATII on 23^rd February 2009. It’s worth recalling the difference between DPC 2009 and DPC 2017.  The most important change has been our membership, more-or-less doubling from 32 to 63.  It’s a remarkable statistic in the tough fiscal environment, and even more so when you realise how many of our 2009 members simply no longer exist.  Agencies like the Research Information Network, Museums Libraries and Archives Council, and the Centre for Digital Library Research didn’t so much leave the Coalition as expire.  The number doesn’t tell you about our growing diversity: how our interaction with banks, manufacturers and architects has set a trend for expansion into the commercial world.  And the numbers don’t tell you about how global the Coalition has become of late: the UN, NATO, UNHCR, the European Central Bank, the Academic Preservation Trust, The University of Berne, the International Criminal Tribunal have all joined in the last three years. 

Anyone who works with web archives quickly becomes used to the fact that most people have not even heard of them – even fewer understand what they are and where you might be able to access them. In 2016, however, it seemed as though web archives began to filter into the public consciousness, to move from the technology pages of the more serious newspapers to the political and even cultural sections. In May 2016, for example, the BBC announced plans to close its Food website, removing approximately 11,000 well-used recipes from search engine results. There was an immediate public outcry – that combination of the BBC and food – and also some very welcome publicity for the value of web archives. The Mirror, for example, noted that ‘If all else fails, the Internet Archive has a record of almost all the BBC Food recipes (11,282 to be precise)’. Similarly, The Independent reported that ‘The easiest way to find any specific recipes is to head to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which keeps a catalogue of almost every website ever published’, with the subheading to the article warning that this ‘close call should remind us to store the websites that we care about’. The British Library got in on the act as well, blogging that ‘We have today instigated a further crawl of the BBC website with the specific aim of ensuring that we save the recipes from the food pages. We can also report that the Internet Archive, Library of Alexandria and the National Library of Iceland have also captured these pages so their future is assured’. Even more encouragingly, it was notable that in many cases below-the-line commenters independently volunteered web archiving, and especially the Internet Archive, as a solution to the problem.

A condensed version of this case note also appears in the Technology Watch Report Personal Digital Archiving by Gabriela Redwine.

Paul Wilson’s case note summarizes his attempts to find a suitable preservation planning process and associated documentation to apply to his personal digital collections. Since he could find no preservation planning process appropriate to individuals, he obtained a slide set detailing a simple preservation workflow from the Digital Preservation Coalition, and used that as a foundation on which to establish an approach to the work. This general approach and accompanying documentation was tested and refined on two of his personal digital collections (one of 800 mementos and the other of 17,000 photos). Template documents were then derived from the results.

This case note describes the solutions best suited to Wilson's collections and resources, but the processes he has developed have a wide applicability to any personal or small collections. In the fuller article (which can be downloaded as a PDF below), Wilson narrates his experiences to provide insights into the practical outcomes of using published guidelines and tools for preservation planning. Individuals and small organisations will be able to replicate those actions described here that are relevant to their own situations. They will also be able to compare their own collections and circumstances with those in this case study in order to assess common conditions and challenges. All of the documents, as well as blank templates, are available below.

• Download the Full Text of Case Note
• Download the slides from Paul Wilson's Webinar: 'Preservation Planning for Personal Digital Archives' (pdf)
• Read more to access the Toolkit