Steering Resources to Safe-Harbor Repositories: The Need for Reliable, Accurate and Affordable Ingest Services

Abstract

With the emergence of centralized, large-scale digital archives, geography becomes a key factor in the preservation of cultural heritage materials. Objects “inside” archives will be actively monitored and managed, whereas those “outside” will be at greater risk of loss and obsolescence. Developing ingest systems and services to process, package and transport objects into managed safe-harbor repositories is an immediate need. Standards, frameworks, and business models for digital archiving must also evolve in due time to support these services.Ingest solutions must address a range of challenges: legal, technical, and financial. Software development, however, is a logical starting point, since tools that automate pre-archiving tasks meet technical requirements for viability and economic ones for affordability. The key tasks to automate are production of preservation metadata, transformation and validation of formats, and creation of repository-compliant transfer packages.The Harvard University Library (HUL) Office for Information Systems (OIS) has developed two applications to promote use of the HUL Digital Repository Service. JHOVE, developed with JSTOR, is a format-validation program; Dmart is a batch deposit tool for audio preservation packages. In Harvard's experience, the target user for such applications has typically been a professional depositing agent with technical expertise, who consults as needed with curatorial experts.With greater understanding of ingest requirements, and the profiles of persons or agencies likely to perform these services, it is hoped that industry will develop and support tools for the digital archiving market.