Digital Preservation Services Research Articles

A hermeneutic dialogical understanding of data reuse across different access regimes

ABSTRACT Policy and scholarly discourse emphasizing the panacea of Open (research) Data shapes expectations, and directs and legitimizes investments in data technologies and infrastructures. This is driven by the hope that Open Data will quicken the pace of research and innovation through data reuse, and that they do so more effectively than other access regimes, such as stewarded and proprietary data. Drawing on Leonelli’s relational framework and Gadamer’s hermeneutical conceptualization of a horizon of meanings, data reuse can be understood as a fitting process. In the latter, a researcher engages in a hermeneutical dialogical interaction with the data’s affordances with the goal of making a scientific contribution. Moreover, the fitting process takes place within a researcher’s bounded individual horizon (BIH), defined as an intentional orientation towards the future; it is made up of the relations and circumstances that modulate each researcher’s unique situation. Seen thus, data reuse is likely to result from the persistence of a researcher’s desire or need to make a scientific contribution, independently of the data access regime. What is more, the necessary interaction between potential reusers and data curators or owners can open up the interpretive affordances of data in the context of proprietary and stewarded data, making data more mutable compared to the relative immutability of data in open repositories. Accordingly, stewarded data, with the proper curation and digital preservation services, might provide a more sustainable form of sharing and reusing data where privacy is at stake.

Digital curation and long-term digital preservation in libraries

For over twenty years public institutions and foundations committed in cultural heritage curation and preservation worked up methodologies, strategies and techniques for long-term digital preservation of digital resources. Thanks to a relevant number of initiatives and services carried on by international institutions and specialized agencies, public and private libraries reached a high level of awareness in this field which requires continuous adaptation due to the constant evolution of publishing industry and the rapid emergence of Open Science. After a quick review of digital preservation milestones, this article looks at some emerging trends and issues which characterize the constant transformation of digital preservation landscape. Dynamic generated digital contents and Open Science to fulfil findability, accessibility, interoperability and reuse (FAIR) of digital assets are engaging new challenges for existing digital preservation services. Digital curation and digital preservation are deeply merged and proceed in parallel to assure long-term usage of digital resources and data. How to select and deploy digital preservation platforms is another complex area where Cloud services can offer the opportunity to reduce the costs of technical infrastructures maintenance and management. Policy and decision making institutional levels need more awareness to draw up digital preservation strategies and to activate services to assure digital contents and data long-term access and reuse. Finally the paper suggests to promote “digital preservation by design” as a new base rule to be applied since the conception of every project and initiative in the cultural heritage, scientific and academic contexts.

The Prevalence of Mild, Moderate, and Severe Nomophobia Symptoms: A Systematic Review, Meta-Analysis, and Meta-Regression.

NOMOPHOBIA, or NO MObile PHone Phobia, refers to a psychological condition in which people fear being disconnected from their mobile phones. The purpose of this review was to establish the prevalence of nomophobia symptoms in youth and young adults according to severity, country, culture, population, measurement tool, and year of data collection. An electronic search of fourteen databases, two digital preservation services, and three content aggregator services was conducted from the inception of each database until 15 September 2021. A total of 52 studies involving 47,399 participants from 20 countries were included in the analyses. The prevalence of nomophobia was defined as the proportion of individuals scoring at or above established cut-offs on validated measures. Based on a random-effects meta-analysis, approximately 20% of individuals showed mild symptoms of nomophobia, 50% showed moderate symptoms, and 20% showed severe symptoms. Our results showed that university students from non-Western cultures are the most likely to suffer severe symptoms. In the year 2021, the prevalence rate of nomophobia increased. The instrument that was best able to detect nomophobia was the nomophobia questionnaire. Most individuals who own mobile phones experience mild or moderate symptoms of nomophobia. Severe symptoms deserve attention from clinicians and research scientists. A valid method of identifying individuals with a severe addiction to their mobile phones will help with timely and effective therapeutic management.

SCOPE and EaaSI: Software Emulation and the Future of Architectural History

SCOPE and EaaSI: Software Emulation and the Future of Architectural History

Digital preservation services at digital scholarship centers

As academic library support services for digital scholarship activities continue to expand and evolve, large volumes of digital outputs have been created by, and in collaboration with, library and information professionals who are affiliated with digital scholarship centers. Drawing on a literature review and a 2018 pilot study of digital preservation services in digital scholarship centers, we propose future directions for investigation of preservation services for digital scholarship and projects.

Preserving the European Union's digital publications heritage: lessons learnt on our journey to making the past accessible for the future

The Publications Office of the EU is managing a digital preservation service on behalf of the EU institutions. Its vision and strategy on this service are described in a Digital Preservation Plan. This plan also details the processes, methodologies and tools applied, and documents the scope of the repository. This short paper describes the establishment of a trustworthy digital preservation service and will showcase some challenges faced and issues remaining to be solved.

Towards automated pre-ingest workflow for bridging information systems and digital preservation services

PurposeThis paper aims to automate pre-ingest workflow for preserving digital content, such as records, through middleware that integrates potentially many information systems with potentially several alternative digital preservation services.Design/methodology/approachThis design research approach resulted in a design for model- and component-based software for such workflow. A proof-of-concept prototype was implemented and demonstrated in context of a European research project, ForgetIT.FindingsThe study identifies design issues of automated pre-ingest for digital preservation while using middleware as a design choice for this purpose. The resulting model and solution suggest functionalities and interaction patterns based on open interface protocols between the source systems of digital content, middleware and digital preservation services. The resulting workflow automates the tasks of fetching digital objects from the source system with metadata extraction, preservation preparation and transfer to a selected preservation service. The proof-of-concept verified that the suggested model for pre-ingest workflow and the suggested component architecture was technologically implementable. Future research and development needs to include new solutions to support context-aware preservation management with increased support for configuring submission agreements as a basis for dynamic automation of pre-ingest and more automated error handling.Originality/valueThe paper addresses design issues for middleware as a design choice to support automated pre-ingest in digital preservation. The suggested middleware architecture supports many-to-many relationships between the source information systems and digital preservation services through open interface protocols, thus enabling dynamic digital preservation solutions for records management.

La conservazione digitale in Italia. Riflessioni su modelli, criteri e soluzioni

The Italian law of digital preservation has determined, from 2014 to current, the start-up of more of 70 companies, named “conservatori accreditati”, to provide high quality digital preservation services to public and private organizations. The particularity of Italian strategy is that two institutions, the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities (MiBAC) and the Agency of Digital Italy (AgID), are defining methods, procedures and technical rules to archives preservation and digital records preservation without any evident coordination. The article aims to analyse the critical issues in current context to contribute to the harmonization of Italian rules for creating and preserving hybrid archives.

Challenges and opportunities in the evolving digital preservation landscape: reflections from Portico

There has been tremendous growth in the amount of digital content created by libraries, publishers, cultural institutions and the general public. While there are great benefits to having content available in digital form, digital objects can be extremely short-lived unless proper attention is paid to preservation. Reflecting on our experience with the digital preservation service Portico, we provide background on Portico’s history and evolving practice of sustainable preservation of the digital artifacts of scholarly communications. We also provide an overview of the digital preservation landscape as we see it now, with some thoughts on current requirements for preservation, and thoughts on the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.

My precious information – how to preserve it?

Do you think your information remains safe inside a cloud? Do you have another truly trustworthy place where you can store all your precious information? These questions lead us to the basic problem behind this paper: None of the official instances are interested in materials possessed by average Joes and Janes. You will have to be politically or otherwise important person to get your personal life story into official digital repositories. We at the Digitalia (Research Center on Digital Information Management) at South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences, believe that there is a strong need for a digital preservation service that would give ordinary citizens the right to decide what to do with their personal information. It is not right that common folks must rely on cloud drives with dubious terms and conditions or unreliable portable or optical devices to store their precious digital information. This article describes an initiative of a low cost full-scale digital archive solution that will be available to common people.

Achieving a milestone: AMOR is now archived in Portico and indexed in CAS

<p>The journal of Advances in Modern Oncology Research (AMOR) is proud to announce its partnership with Portico, a leading digital preservation service provider, to ensure the long term accessibility of its published contents. In addition, it is now indexed by the gold standard of chemical information database Chemical Abstracts Services (CAS) after publishing only six bimonthly issues, dating back to October 2015. AMOR’s Editor-in-Chief Dr. Omar Abdel-Rahman proudly shares: “Our vision is to be far more than just a journal, we want to be a platform that publishes high quality cancer research contents from all over the world. I think we are progressing, at an acceptable pace, in that direction."</p><p> </p><p>The Portico archive is a “centralized repository of tens of thousands of e-journals, e-books, and other electronic content, replicated to ensure security,” according to the registry organization. “Content comes into the archive under formal preservation agreements with publishers. Content providers submit source files to Portico, and we repackage these source files into an archival format and provide long-term archival management and format migration as needed. Our approach is driven by our commitment to meeting clear preservation goals,” it states. </p><p> </p><p>AMOR’s Managing Editor Dr. TS Jong, when asked to comment about the impact of this development, adds: “AMOR is committed towards meeting the highest international publication standards and as such, has a clear archiving and indexing roadmap to sustain our growth. The journal acknowledges the importance of ensuring the continuous accessibility of our published articles in multiple repositories. Therefore, we are delighted with the recent partnership between AMOR and Portico, a well-known third-party repository service provider, to safeguard the long-term availability of our contents.”</p><p> </p><p>Archiving AMOR’s articles within Portico ensures that the materials published are always available for access. In addition, AMOR’s inclusion in Portico – one of the leading digital preservation services in the world – ensures that AMOR is a step-closer towards its goal of being indexed by PubMed or Medline eventually, as Portico is one of the certified repositories according to Medline’s requirement, Dr. Jong explains.</p><p> </p><p>Meanwhile, Chemical Abstracts Service is an internationally-renowned authority for chemical information that delivers the most complete, cross-linked, and effective digital information for scientific discoveries. CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society, is a source of chemical information and its databases are recognized as the ultimate ‘gold standard’ by the industry. Physically located in Columbus, Ohio, United States, CAS provides updated chemistry content which is maintained by hundreds of PhD scientists from all around the world. The content in CAS covers almost all information and accurate details acquired from thousands of journals, books, patent authorities, web sources, dissertations, conference proceedings, to name a few.</p><p> </p><p>According to Dr. Jong, AMOR is aware that being indexed in relevant databases would broaden its readership and consequently improve the journal’s standing among other oncology journals. “In this regard, we are excited about our inclusion in the CAS databases. This reflects the quality of our published contents and will certainly pave the way for subsequent recognitions by other academic databases,” he says. Dr. Abdel-Rahman goes on to explain, “Our vision for the development and progress of AMOR is to turn it into a benchmark of good quality cancer research and to disseminate this high-quality research to all those who are interested, without any barriers. That is why the indexing and archiving of AMOR into highly accessed biomedical indices is vital to achieve this goal.”</p><p> </p><p>AMOR’s future is bright and hopeful, the EIC says. “We promise our respectable readers and collaborators that AMOR will continue to develop itself and strive to include its contents in other highly accessed biomedical indices,” Dr. Abdel-Rahman concludes. ■</p>

A Preliminary Investigation of Reversing RML: From an RDF dataset to its Column-Based data source.

BackgroundA large percentage of scientific data with tabular structure are published on the Web of Data as interlinked RDF datasets. When we come to the issue of long-term preservation of such RDF-based digital objects, it is important to provide full support for reusing them in the future. In particular, it should include means for both players who have no familiarity with RDF data model and, at the same time, who by working only with the native format of the data still provide sufficient information. To achieve this, we need mechanisms to bring the data back to their original format and structure.New informationIn this paper, we investigate how to perform the reverse process for column-based data sources. In particular, we devise an algorithm, RML2CSV, and exemplify its implementation in transforming an RDF dataset into its CSV tabular structure, through the use of the same RML mapping document that was used to generate the set of RDF triples. Through a set of content-based criteria, we attempt a comparative evaluation to measure the similarity between the rebuilt CSV and the original one. The results are promising and show that, under certain assumptions, RML2CSV reconstructs the same data with the same structure, offering more advanced digital preservation services.

Cloud-based Digital Preservation Services for Small or Midsized Institutions: Results of a pilot study of Archivematica + DuraCloud

Cloud-based Digital Preservation Services for Small or Midsized Institutions: Results of a pilot study of Archivematica + DuraCloud

Book Review: Practical Digital Preservation: A How-To Guide for Organizations of Any Size

Practical Digital Preservation: A How-To Guide for Organizations of Any Size. By Adrian Brown. Chicago: Neal-Schuman, 2013. 336 p. $75 softcover (ISBN: 978-1-55570-942-6). Practical Digital Preservation: A How-To Guide for Organizations of Any Size provides detailed information about and helpful strategies for tackling robust and evolving world of digital preservation. author defines digital preservation as the process of maintaining a digital object for as long as required, in a form which is authentic, and accessible to users (xii). book is divided into ten chapters and includes a glossary of terms, appendixes, bibliography, and index. first chapter includes some practical information regarding appropriate audience, use of book, minimum requirements for embarking on digital preservation, myths about digital preservation, a comprehensive survey covering history of digital preservation, and some helpful hints about terminology. In chapter 2, author outlines strategies for building a digital preservation program and for handling challenges such as limited staffing, resources, technical infrastructure, and knowledge of project management. He argues that first step should be securing recognition from administrators that digital preservation is important to success of organization. author helps reader in this regard by focusing this chapter on creating an effective business plan for digital preservation. Moreover, author includes methods for discussing financial and nonfinancial benefits of adopting and embracing a digital preservation plan. Creating a digital preservation policy and knowing essential components therewith can be a powerful means of securing support from administrators and colleagues. Chapter 3 provides a needs assessment for creating a well-documented, sustainable, and successful digital preservation program. chapter focuses on best way to develop a set of requirements, communicate with stakeholders to secure support and contribution to program, examine other business plans and policies, and build on what organization is already doing. Additionally, author includes detailed information on how established requirements should be articulated and documented. last part of chapter highlights application of established requirements and best way to create an actual digital preservation program. fourth chapter includes many useful case studies that outline approaches to creating and implementing a digital preservation program. A range of possible options are discussed in this chapter, from in-house solutions to outsourcing; in addition author describes why certain models are better suited to particular organizations. If an organization has already chosen an approach, this chapter would be useful to consult as it assesses implementation process as well as practicalities of managing a digital preservation service. Finally, author provides information on best way to develop a realistic roadmap to bring a digital preservation program to its optimum level of service and capacity in future. Chapters 5 and 6 focus on two stages of acquiring digital content for repositories. author describes stage one in chapter 5: The institution makes a decision to acquire a specific collection of material, undertakes any preparatory activities, and performs physical transfer of that material into its custody (109). …

Digital Preservation File Format Policies of ARL Member Libraries: An Analysis

Whether overseeing institutional repositories, digital library collections, or digital preservation services, repository managers often establish file format policies intended to extend the longevity of collections under their care. While concerted efforts have been made in the library community to encourage common standards, digital preservation policies regularly vary from one digital library service to another. In the interest of gaining a broad view of contemporary digital preservation practice in North American research libraries, this paper presents the findings of a study of file format policies at Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member institutions. It is intended to present the digital preservation community with an assessment of the level of trust currently placed in common file formats in digital library collections and institutional repositories. Beginning with a summary of file format research to date, the authors describe the research methodology they used to collect and analyze data from the file format policies of ARL Library repositories and digital library services. The paper concludes with a presentation and analysis of findings that explore levels of confidence placed in image, text, audio, video, tabular data, software application, presentation, geospatial, and computer program file formats. The data show that file format policies have evolved little beyond the document and image digitization standards of traditional library reformatting programs, and that current approaches to file format policymaking must evolve to meet the challenges of research libraries' expanding digital repository services.

ENGLISH

The introduction of digital preservation services into the operations of institutions where existing workflowprocesses are established affects the process infrastructure in many ways. This leads in itself to mutualadaptation needs. If not only internal but also external organisational units are involved and that is oftenunavoidable in a complex process such as the long-term preservation-the importance of a comprehensiveservice including an advanced organisational solution and a cost model is striking. Against this background,it is necessary to bring together technology and organisation and to anchor in a holistic approach operationalaspects of digital preservation and its organisational embeddedness in institutions. Of course needs that arestated in a theoretical manner require practical implementation. Reflecting the history of workflow implementationin the German National Library some central needs and results from these experiences are presented. Thenew workflow for mass ingest of digital publications integrates requirements from the digital preservation unitin the broader scope of ingest routines and showcases the demand for modular and generic components,which can be integrated in the IT-infrastructure of a library. Results from the project DP4lib show in additionhow a service-oriented infrastructure for digital preservation services can be established. By implementingthe project was learned that much more important than technical tools is the workflow-related work, and hereespecially quality assurance, verifiable processes, predictable costs, reliable reporting, and documentationof history. http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/djlit.32.4.2523

Implementing Metadata that Guide Digital Preservation Services

Effective digital preservation depends on a set of preservation services that work together to ensure that digital objects can be preserved for the long-term. These services need digital preservation metadata, in particular, descriptions of the properties that digital objects may have and descriptions of the requirements that guide digital preservation services. This paper analyzes how these services interact and use these metadata and develops a data dictionary to support them.

From education to preservation: Emerging institutional repository services in the scholarship lifecycle

The success of an institutional repository (IR) depends upon providing value-added services that actively support the scholarly communication process. This process consists of: • Registering the intellectual idea; • Certifying the quality and validity of findings; • Disseminating to users; • Preserving the scholarly record for the future. This panel draws together information professionals tasked with delivering IR services to campus. This session will outline many of the challenges of implementing IR services to support the scholarly lifecycle, and illuminate opportunities and future directions for the profession and academia alike. For example, repositories increasingly offer educational forums on topics such as author rights, open access, intellectual property and information ethics to better inform scholars before they share their work with a publisher or register it on the web. These educational services have the potential to transform the perception and role of the library and librarian. Libraries are strategically repositioning to more closely align with the university's distribution strategy, particularly with hosting journals and conference proceedings in the IR. There are implications of certifying the quality of campus-based when serving as a peer-review publishing platform. Early literature conceptualizes how IRs could disseminate content locked behind publisher-enforced pay-walls. In practice, several popular ingest models have emerged, some at odds with the earlier theoretical models. Many forces have shaped the rationale for the application of a specific deposit model but there are practices IRs can adopt to increase the speed of ingest and dissemination of formally published content. Repositories are designed to cumulatively collect and provide access to content in perpetuity. However, the availability of resources influences long-term preservation efforts. Given the array of expectations and demands, there are limits to IR digital preservation services. This becomes particularly acute with deposit of multi-modal materials and the anticipated research data deluge.

Designing and Implementing Second Generation Digital Preservation Services

This paper describes the Stanford Digital Repository (SDR), a large scale, digital preservation system for scholarly materials. It examines the lessons-learned through over five years of development and operational experience. Building on the knowledge gained, the paper goes on to outline a new repository design and service framework, SDR 2.0, that will address some of the challenges that have emerged. Changes in the environment such as staffing levels and collaborative opportunities are also described. Finally, the paper includes observations on the general state of the preservation and repository communities, and the emergence of a new generation of systems and strategies in this space

Towards Smart Storage for Repository Preservation Services

The move to digital is being accompanied by a huge rise in volumes of (born-digital) content and data. As a result the curation lifecycle has to be redrawn. Processes such as selection and evaluation for preservation have to be driven by automation. Manual processes will not scale, and the traditional signifiers and selection criteria in older formats, such as print publication, are changing. The paper will examine at a conceptual and practical level how preservation intelligence can be built into software-based digital preservation tools and services on the Web and across the network ‘cloud’ to create ‘smart’ storage for long-term, continuous data monitoring and management. Some early examples will be presented, focussing on storage management and format risk assessment.