Abstracts, Presentations, and Handouts from the Best Practices Exchange contributors appear below. They are sorted by Exchange topic and then by presentation name. Click below to jump to a specific topic:
Access to Digital Assets
Authentication of Digital Assets
Collection of Digital Assets
Identification, Selection, and Appraisal of Digital Assets
Metadata
Organization: Central versus Federated
Preservation of Digital Assets
Repository Systems
Resources/Workflows for the Management of Digital Assets
Access to Digital Assets
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"Accessing the TRAIL"
Kevin Marsh, Texas State Library and Archives
Discussed the successes and failures of the Texas Records and Information Locator (TRAIL) program at the Texas State Library and Archives Commission from the access aspect.
Link: http://www2.tsl.state.tx.us/trail/
"Development of an Online Ordering System"
Elree Smith, North Carolina Office of the Secretary of State
Discussed some of the issues that went into planning and creating the Department's Online Ordering System and public access to the digital images of documents filed by the Agency. Also demonstrated accessing the Department's Secretary of State Knowledge Base (SOSKB) Program via the Internet.
Link: http://www.sosnc.com/
"Electronic Records: Issues in Transferring, Maintaining and Providing Access"
Elisabeth Golding, State Library and Archives of Florida
The State Archives of Florida is working with the Executive Office of the Governor to prepare for transfer of records as the end of Governor Jeb Bush’s administration approaches. Issues along the entire spectrum of the process are under discussion, from clarifying records management and archival transfer procedures for Governor’s Office staff to the technical challenges of transferring, maintaining, and providing access to masses of electronic records. Among the challenges to be addressed are how to identify archival records among the massive quantities of electronic files in numerous formats maintained by the Governor and his staff; how to physically transfer and maintain those electronic files selected for transfer to the Archives, among them millions of e-mails and many thousands of digital photographic images; and how to provide access to these electronic records in a way that is useful and meaningful to archival researchers.
"GALILEO: the Georgia Government Publications Database"
Susan Tuggle, University of Georgia
The Georgia Government Publications database on GALILEO contains full text of over 25,000 publications of agencies within the Georgia state government and coverage includes 1994-present. Types of materials included are annual reports, budget documents, periodicals, maps, posters, and a few videos. Shared experiences about development of the database and how it provides public access to government information.
Handout (GALILEO Bookmark. Design #1)
Handout (GALILEO Bookmark. Design #2)
Link: http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/govdocs
"OCLC Digital Archive at the California State Library"
Janet Coles, California State Library
The California State Library is using the OCLC Digital Archive (DA) toolset to establish an "interim" program to permanently preserve and provide access to electronic state publications. Together the OCLC DA tools they provide a tested, production-level, and relatively affordable solution to digital archiving and access. Utilizing technology and processes based on current digital archive standards (OAIS, METS, etc.), in most cases the OCLC DA can be implemented quickly, without the need for local IT development. The tools are designed to interface with the legacy systems and standards most libraries use to generate descriptive metadata and provide access to publications (OCLC WorldCat/library catalogs/MARC 21, etc.), and also with newer standards (Dublin Core, HTML, RDF). A brief demonstration of the OCLC Digital Archive tools was given, along with a short discussion of the pros and cons of using the DA, and an outline of how the California State Library plans to proceed with its digital archiving program.
"Washington State Digital Archives"
Adam Jansen, Washington State Archives
The Washington State Digital Archives is accessible to the public online and currently supports over 700 users per day. This session discussed the different searches allowed, how the content is organized and provided, and the e-commerce process to order records.
Link: http://www.digitalarchives.wa.gov/default.aspx
"Web Harvesting at the Library of Congress"
Michelle Gallinger, Library of Congress
Discussion of what goes into making the material archived through web harvesting publicly accessible.
"What State Depository Libraries Want: Making Digital State Publications Accessible through the North Carolina Clearinghouse"
Christy Allen, State Library of North Carolina
The State Library of North Carolina seeks to enhance the accessibility of born-digital documents from North Carolina State agencies by incorporating them into the North Carolina State Documents Clearinghouse. Currently, the Clearinghouse distributes paper and fiche state documents to 23 Depository Libraries throughout North Carolina. Before incorporating digital documents into the Clearinghouse, the State Library of North Carolina conducted a survey of its Depository Libraries asking them key questions about digital information. Summarized the survey results relevant to accessing born digital publications and described the possible next steps for the North Carolina Clearinghouse.
Handout (PDF Format)
Authentication of Digital Assets
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"AIHT and Authentication Issues"
Butch Lazorchak, Library of Congress
Authentication issues in the context of the Archive Ingest and Handling Test (AIHT) which was designed to test the feasibility of transferring digital archives from one institution to another. The purpose was to test the stresses involved in the wholesale transfer, ingestion, management, and export of a relatively modest digital archive. One significant aspect of the test was to assess the process of ingesting digital materials into an archive, including the myriad issues involved in the authentication of heterogeneous digital materials.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
"Authentication"
Andy Pitman, Microsoft
Discussed authentication in a general sense. I.e. as it fits in with a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI).
"Authentication: Best Practices Exchange 2006"
Connie Frankenfeld, Illinois State Library
How can you be sure that the document you retrieve from your depository is unaltered from the time it was deposited? Discussion covered checksums, change alerts, and encoded delivery.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
"Authentication: Washington State Archives"
Adam Jansen, Washington State Archives
The Washington State Digital Archives accepts records from multiple agencies at the state and local level. Authentication and chain of custody of the records is of the utmost importance. To ensure the authenticity of records, agencies must have authenticated transfers to submit data. This presentation detailed the transfer process used by the Digital Archives.
Link: http://www.digitalarchives.wa.gov/default.aspx
"Certified Documents at the North Carolina Office of the Secretary of State"
Elree Smith, North Carolina Office of the Secretary of State
Discussed the Department's Online verification of certified documents. Also, talked briefly about IT decisions regarding file formats, scanned images resolution, and the delay in making documents available via the Internet.
Link: http://www.sosnc.com/
"Digital Signatures and Chain of Custody"
Mary Alice Baish, Georgetown University
Discussed what is required by the legal community in terms of digital signatures, and chain of custody information. Also talked about the state survey done by the American Association of Law Libraries.
"Verifying Authenticity and Integrity of Digital Publications"
Kate Villano, Government Printing Office
GPO's Future Digital System (FDsys) will allow federal content creators to easily create and submit content that can then be preserved, authenticated, managed and delivered upon request. This future digital system, scheduled for operation in December 2007, will form the core of GPO's future operations. As the amount of electronic federal government information increases, there is a need to ensure that information is disseminated from an official source and that content is protected against unauthorized modification or substitution. GPO is planning to use authentication technologies to verify the authenticity and integrity of the electronic U.S. Government documents that it disseminates through the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP). Presented information on GPO’s current authentication initiatives, as well as how to approach authentication of government documents in the development of GPO’s Future Digital Information System.
Link: http://www.gpo.gov/projects/fdsys.htm
Collection of Digital Assets
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"Collection Building Processes within the North Carolina Geospatial Data Archiving Project (NCGDAP) "
Steve Morris, North Carolina State University
NCSU Libraries and NC Center for Geographic Information & Analysis are partnering with Library of Congress on a project focused on preservation of state and local agency digital geospatial data. Previous pilot project experience in archiving state and local geospatial data made clear the need to take an infrastructure-based approach to content acquisition. Contacting 100 counties and a large number of municipalities is a time consuming process and exacerbates the “contact fatigue” experienced by local agencies as they are repeatedly hit with data requests. This discussion focused on efforts to engage the existing spatial data infrastructure in the collection building process. The potential for using emerging web services technologies, based on Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) specifications, was also addressed.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
Link: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/ncgdap/
"Collecting Electronic Records"
Elisabeth Golding, State Library and Archives of Florida
The State Archives of Florida is working with the Executive Office of the Governor to prepare for transfer of records as the end of Governor Jeb Bush’s administration approaches. Issues along the entire spectrum of the process are under discussion, from clarifying records management and archival transfer procedures for Governor’s Office staff to the technical challenges of transferring, maintaining, and providing access to masses of electronic records. Among the challenges to be addressed are how to identify archival records among the massive quantities of electronic files in numerous formats maintained by the Governor and his staff; how to physically transfer and maintain those electronic files selected for transfer to the Archives, among them millions of e-mails and many thousands of digital photographic images; and how to provide access to these electronic records in a way that is useful and meaningful to archival researchers.
"Collecting for TRAIL"
Kevin Marsh, Texas State Library and Archives
Discussed the successes and failures of the Texas Records and Information Locator (TRAIL) program at the Texas State Library and Archives Commission from the collection aspect.
Link: http://www2.tsl.state.tx.us/trail/
"Collection of Kentucky State Publications and Minutes"
Glen McAninch, Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives
Since 1958, the Public Records Division (PRD) of the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives has been the state’s central repository for publications and reports which are issued by state agencies and intended for general public distribution. Both state agency publications and the minutes of state-level boards, commissions and legislative committees for the period 1996 to the present have been collected in electronic format over the past three years and are now available via web pages organized by agency name. Various units in the PRD are responsible for accessioning the publications and minutes. While much of the acquisition has occurred through downloads of agencies sites using a commercial harvesting tool, the publications will be solicited from agencies as part of long standing legislative mandates and administrative regulations. An administrative regulation that deals specifically with publications was recently updated to include electronic publications, as well as to set standards (PDF/A) for transfer of electronic publications to the Archives. The regulation also reiterated that Records Officers, as agencies’ designated liaisons with PRD on records management matters, are responsible for coordinating the collection and transfer of publications in all formats to the Archives.
"Dilemmas in Collecting Digital Documents"
Susan Tuggle, University of Georgia
Since 2000 the University of Georgia Libraries, the official depository for Georgia government publications, has been collecting documents in electronic format from Georgia state agencies. These e-docs, along with digitized print publications, are added to the Georgia Government Publications database which will be 10 years old in May, 2006. Session discussed communicating with state agencies pertaining to submission of e-docs, work flow, and problems encountered with handling different formats of e-docs.
Handout (PDF Format)
Link: http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/govdocs
Link: http://www.libs.uga.edu/govdocs/collections/georgia/code.html
"Internet Archive"
Kristine Hanna, Internet Archive
Internet Archive was founded in 1996 to build an ‘Internet Library’, with the mission to provide permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format. Currently, the Internet Archive has the largest publicly available web archive in existence with 60 billion pages from 50 million websites world-wide and receives 100 requests per second. This session focused on the best practices and policies that Internet Archive developed in web archiving, access and preservation, along with partners such as the Library of Congress, and NARA. Also reviewed some of the nuts and bolts of web search on a large scale, walked through some of the different crawling services and took a quick look at some of the tools and technology currently used. Lastly, they covered some of the challenges and limitations around archiving content from the internet and what is being done to address these issues for the future.
Link: http://www.archive.org/index.php
"OCLC Digital Archive and the Library of Michigan"
Ann Marie Sanders, Library of Michigan
Beginning in 1998, the Library of Michigan began investigating the standards, protocols and systems available for preserving digital state government information in collaboration with the State Archives of Michigan and other agencies. As a result of these investigations, they discovered and joined OCLC's Web Document Digital Archive pilot project in 2001. Since 'going live' with the end-product of that project, the Digital Archive in 2002, the Library of Michigan has tried to counter the rising tide of state government information that is available only in a digital format, and no longer produced in a tangible, preservable format. Realizing that they need to take a wholesale approach to this issue in order to be effective, the Library of Michigan has chosen to transition the state documents program from print to primarily digital formats. Presentation discussed the fundamental ideas behind this approach including newly developed collection development and reference tools, and the vision of a reorganized depository library system, all of which is designed to be proactive and work in tandem with the growing trend in digital state government information.
"Web Archiving: Tools for the Capture of Digital Assets on Websites"
Kelly Eubank, North Carolina Office of Archives and History
The North Carolina State Archives and the North Carolina State Library have worked cooperatively together to utilize and assess different methodologies to capture state government web sites—from a manual process of burning files to CDs to a more automated capture of websites. Recently, there has been a push in the professional community to develop tools to capture and make accessible websites. Presentation discussed the tools that have been employed, successes, failures, and learning experiences. Also discussed what web archiving tool was ultimately chosen, and why it was chosen.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
Identification, Selection, and Appraisal of Digital Assets
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"Appraising Electronic Records at the South Carolina Department of Archives and History"
Don Chalfant, Library of Virginia
Enabled through NHPRC grant funds, the South Carolina Department of Archives and History is in the midst of evolving a functional appraisal of their state government records. Selected state agencies were targeted and processes developed to find and appraise archival records including those created and maintained electronically. Session discussed the development of these processes and the decisions regarding archival electronic records. Session focused on the work conducted in South Carolina, but there were additional insights about the processes at the Library of Virginia.
"Archival Appraisal and Digital Documents"
Harry Keiner, Appalachian State University
Discussed the use of the archival theory of appraisal to select born digital administrative documents for preservation, based on their evidential value and research potential.
"Digital Documents Program at the New Mexico State Library: Identification, Selection and Appraisal of Digital Assets"
Marcia Smith, New Mexico State Library
The New Mexico State Library builds its digital collections using a digital documents collection development policy developed in conjunction with its depository libraries and other state agencies. Speaker discussed this policy, its development, its effectiveness and its evaluation with an eye to the future.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
"Identification at the South Carolina Department of Archives and History"
Bryan Collars, South Carolina Department of Archives and History
Discussed the appraisal of both permanent and non-permanent records as well as involving state agencies in the appraisal of their own records.
"Identification/Organization: NC Best Practices Exchange"
William LeFurgy, Library of Congress
A brief overview of the content selection strategies used by the eight National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) consortia. Session covered ideas regarding topics, formats, and techniques.
"Identification, Selection, and Appraisal within the North Carolina Geospatial Data Archiving Project (NCGDAP)"
Steve Morris, North Carolina State University
NCSU Libraries and NC Center for Geographic Information & Analysis are partnering with Library of Congress on a project focused on preservation of state and local agency digital geospatial data. The project is targeting GIS data, digital aerial photography (primarily digital orthophotos), digital maps, and tabular data at sub-county resolution. The project is making use of existing data inventories to identify content. These inventories include formal inventories carried out in conjunction with spatial data infrastructure as well as informal holding lists developed by individual state agencies. The project will be working with existing advisory bodies to determine optimal frequency of capture of time-versioned data such as land parcels. The project approach to identifying and targeting data resources will be outlined. The challenge of acquiring and preserving complex data projects, which add value to underlying data, will also be addressed.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
Link: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/ncgdap/
"Identifying State Government Digital Assets: The Everglades Digital Library"
Gail Clement & Sherry Mosley, Florida International University
Florida International University Libraries has been identifying, selecting and appraising state government assets for online access and/or digital preservation since 1995, with the establishment of the Everglades Digital Library. The digital collections program has grown considerably in these 10+ years, expanding its scope with other local/regional collections in addition to Everglades; and has added additional functionality, formats, delivery mechanisms and services. In this presentation discussions covered strategies for identifying needs of both end-users and information providers (e.g., the agency-publishers); selection criteria; dealing with rights management issues (copyright, privacy, protected information, etc.); and the benfits and pitfalls of collaborative digitization.
"Tools and Guidelines for Appraisal of Electronic Records"
Elisabeth Golding, State Library and Archives of Florida
As part of a pilot project to try to establish an electronic records program at the State Archives of Florida, project staff developed a preliminary set of tools and guidelines for appraisal, accessioning, preserving, describing, and providing access to archival electronic records. An Appraisal-Pre-Accessioning Form was developed to use in analyzing the content and technical characteristics of the records, and guidelines were written regarding general appraisal techniques, use of the Appraisal/Pre-Accessioning Form, accessioning, processing, description, preservation, and access. The tools were tested in several partner agencies and some electronic files/databases were identified as archival, although little progress has been made since then in establishing a formal electronic records program or in acquiring archival electronic records. This will change as the result of a current project with the Executive Office of the Governor to prepare for transfer of records at the end of Governor Jeb Bush’s administration. Challenges include identifying archival records among the massive quantities of electronic files in numerous formats maintained by the Governor and his staff.
"Transitioning from Paper to Digital: Incorporating Digital Documents into the Michigan Depository System"
Ann Marie Sanders, Library of Michigan
Beginning in 1998, the Library of Michigan began investigating the standards, protocols and systems available for preserving digital state government information in collaboration with the State Archives of Michigan and other agencies. As a result of these investigations, they joined OCLC's Web Document Digital Archive pilot project in 2001. Since 'going live' with the end-product of that project, the Digital Archive in 2002, the Library of Michigan has tried to counter the rising tide of state government information that is available only in a digital format, and no longer produced in a tangible, preservable format. Realizing that they need to take a wholesale approach to this issue in order to be effective, the Library of Michigan has chosen to transition the state documents program from print to primarily digital formats. Speaker presented the fundamental ideas behind this approach including newly developed collection development and reference tools, and the vision of a reorganized depository library system, all of which is designed to be proactive and work in tandem with the growing trend in digital state government information.
"Web Archiving at the State Archives and State Library of North Carolina"
Jennifer Ricker, State Library of North Carolina
The State Library of North Carolina has been piloting a project for the automated collection of digital state publications on the web which roughly employs the Arizona model. Speaker briefly explained the project and then focused on the domain identification and selection process. Also discussed how the initial domain list was created and then evaluated via macro appraisal to make sure that the important content was captured first. Also commented on the impact of the size constraints of the current collection tool and the challenges of macro appraisal. Finally, discussed they documented this process in website capture standards and how they are handling agencies who choose not to participate in the automated capture process.
"Web Harvesting at the GPO"
Kate Villano, Government Printing Office
GPO's Future Digital System (FDsys) will allow federal content creators to easily create and submit content that can then be preserved, authenticated, managed and delivered upon request. This future digital system, scheduled for operation in December 2007, will form the core of GPO's future operations. With the advent of the Internet and other electronic dissemination methods, the trend in recent years is that Federal Government publications are posted directly to the web. To ensure these digital publications are included in the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) and the Cataloging and Indexing Program, GPO has launched two simultaneous web harvesting pilot projects. Speaker shared how the web harvesting pilots will test different technologies and methodologies as a first step in developing long-term harvesting capability for GPO, which will be built in conjunction with the implementation of GPO's Future Digital Information System.
Link: http://www.gpo.gov/projects/fdsys.htm
Metadata
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"AIHT and Metadata Issues"
Butch Lazorchak, Library of Congress
Discussed markup issues in the context of the Archive Ingest and Handling Test (AIHT) which was designed to test the feasibility of transferring digital archives from one institution to another. The purpose was to test the stresses involved in the wholesale transfer, ingestion, management, and export of a relatively modest digital archive. One significant aspect of the test was to examine the issues involved in managing metadata associated with a heterogeneous set of digital materials, including an examination of potential benefits gained while attempting to upgrade the quality and consistency of the metadata in preparation for transfer between archives.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
"Arizona Memory Project: Creating a Metadata Dictionary for Diverse Collections"
Sara Muth & Marisa Ramirez, Arizona State Library, Archives, and Public Records
The Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records developed metadata standards for the Arizona Memory Project, a new statewide collaborative digital initiative. While developing these standards, many considerations were addressed including metadata interoperability, standardization and compliance. Challenges, successes and the practical application of the guidelines for state government agency publications were discussed.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
Link: http://azmemory.lib.az.us
"Establishing Metadata Standards through NC ECHO"
Kathy Wisser, State Library of North Carolina
NC ECHO is a statewide project for promoting the use of digital technologies to broaden and enhance access to North Carolina's cultural heritage through cultural heritage institutions. Establishing metadata standards and facilitating the use of those standards by our partner institutions is one of primary goals of the project. Speaker discussed NC ECHO's approach to preservation metadata and its location of preservation metadata within the larger framework. This preservation metadata standard focuses on repository-created digital surrogates rather than born-digital items. In addition, the speaker coveedr the consortial aspect to endorsing and communicating this standard to a broader audience.
Link: http://www.ncecho.org/
"Getting in Gear: "Better" Practices for Dublin Core Metadata for Publications Repositories"
Ray Matthews, Utah State Library
The Utah State Library recently completed a draft Dublin Core schema, standard, and best practices for use with the state's new Digital Library for state publications. In the process, best practices developed by states, national governments and digital library projects were sifted through. Speaker highlighted the problematic issues that everyone seems to be encountering and proposed some compromise solutions.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
"Ingesting Digital Geospatial Data Resources into DSpace"
Rob Farrell, North Carolina State University
NCSU Libraries has been working on a joint effort with the North Carolina Center for Geographic Information and Analysis to archive digital geospatial data resources in North Carolina. This pilot project is funded through the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) in partnership with the Library of Congress. This presentation focused on the workflow for ingesting digital geospatial data resources into DSpace, highlighting some of the significant issues for geospatial data.
"Metadata for TRAIL"
Kevin Marsh, Texas State Library and Archives
Discuss the successes and failures of the Texas Records and Information Locator (TRAIL) program at the Texas State Library and Archives Commission from the metadata aspect.
Link: http://www2.tsl.state.tx.us/trail/
"Metadata Handling in the North Carolina Geospatial Data Archiving Project (NCGDP)"
Steve Morris, North Carolina State University
NCSU Libraries and NC Center for Geographic Information & Analysis are partnering with Library of Congress on a project focused on preservation of state and local agency digital geospatial data. In the current workflow, Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) metadata records are normalized, remediated, and synchronized with the data. In cases where FGDC metadata is absent, minimal metadata is software-generated using available tools, while additional metadata elements are populated on the basis of data documentation, data inventories, and data producer information. Selected FGDC elements are extracted, disambiguated, and in some cases improved in order to serve as discrete preservation metadata elements outside of the FGDC context. In the current iteration of the workflow METS records will be used as wrappers to combine FGDC metadata with additional technical and administrative metadata elements. These elements will be extracted from the FGDC metadata as well as from transfer set metadata and ingest workflow technical operations. In a future iteration of the workflow it is possible that this superset of preservation metadata will be repackaged as PREMIS (Preservation Metadata Implementation Strategies) metadata elements within the METS record.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
Link: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/ncgdap/
"Metadata Schema at the Washington State Digital Archives"
Adam Jansen, Washington State Archives
Speaker described the Metadata schema used at the Washington State Digital Archives, including what is received from the external agencies, what is added internally, what is displayed on the web, and what is archived onto tape. Examples of the metadata schema used were shown and discussed in greater detail.
Link: http://www.digitalarchives.wa.gov/default.aspx
Organization: Central versus Federated
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"Digital Preservation Policy Framework at the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources"
Jan Reagan, State Library of North Carolina
A taskforce of 6 staff from the State Library and State Archives in the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources were appointed by Library and Archives management in 2004 to address and explore the issues of digital preservation of state government information. The taskforce drafted a Digital Preservation Policy Framework based on the Cornell model in 2005 and presented it to the Department’s senior management for review and approval in early 2006. The Framework, which formalizes the Department’s commitment to lead state government in digital preservation activities; supports cooperative efforts between the State Library, State Archives, IT, and other state agencies; and provides the foundation for digital preservation policy and program development, was approved. Speaker discussed the strategies and processes that led to the appointment of the taskforce, how the taskforce worked together to create the Framework, the presentation to senior management, and next steps.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
"How Technology Effects Organization"
Elree Smith, North Carolina Office of the Secretary of State
Discusses how the Agency's centralized digital image server fits into what the speaker referred to as the "Digital Agency". The digital image server is the key piece of equipment that will permit Agency-wide use of the Kodak Archive Writer from a single source. Speaker also discussed interaction with the Division of Archives and History in reviewing and modifying the Division's Retention Schedule.
"NDIIPP's Approach to Collaboration"
William LeFurgy, Library of Congress
Discussion of progress to date concerning the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) approach. NDIIPP uses a decentralized technical approach in conjunction with cross-cutting collaboration among consortial partners.
Link: http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/
"Organizing the TRAIL"
Kevin Marsh, Texas State Library and Archives
Speaker discussed the successes and failures of the Texas Records and Information Locator (TRAIL) program at the Texas State Library and Archives Commission from the organization aspect.
Link: http://www2.tsl.state.tx.us/trail/
"Partnerships for the Preservation of Kentucky Records"
Glen McAninch, Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives
The Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives is exploring a variety of organizational frameworks or partnerships to assure that electronic records with permanent value will be preserved on multiple servers disbursed geographically. The Department is discussing the sharing of storage among the participants of a National Historical Publications and Records Commission grant funded Persistent Archives Testbed Project (Michigan, Minnesota, and Ohio). Sustainability of the project necessitates the forming of a federation. The department has established a partnership with the agency responsible for the multi-agency state GIS system. Since these records have been scheduled as permanent records, the State Archives has accessioned copies of the raster images that have been loaded into the system, as well as working with the Division of Geographic Information to ensure that snapshots of the vector data are captured periodically and preserved. Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives (KDLA) is exploring the idea of sharing the preservation of state publications with Kentucky universities, two of whom are testing the use of LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) software for other projects. LOCKSS is a open source software that provides librarians with an easy and inexpensive way to collect, store, preserve, and provide access to their own, local copy of authorized content. The State Library Services Division, with the assistance of the Public Records Division, is responsible for cataloging state publications, including those in electronic format, and for providing access to the publication’s permanent URL via links in the catalog record. The presentation discussed the advantages and issues with each of these configurations.
Link: http://www.sdsc.edu/PAT/
"When New Legislation Means New Organization"
Craig Neilson, Utah State Library
Utah is just now beginning to develop the tools to provide public access to digital state publications. Recently passed legislation initiated by the State Library authorizes them to preserve and provide access to these records through a digital library. They are now faced with the challenge of a statewide Information Technology reorganization and changes within the Department, as well as staffing and budget limitations. Speaker explored some of the political and organizational issues involved.
"Working Together: Digital Collaboration at the New York State Archives"
Prudence Backman, New York State Archives
The New York State Archives recently completed a two year cooperative grant with seven other repositories which virtually brought together digital collections and finding aids related to environmental history. One of the problems they faced was whether they should take a centralized or decentralized approach to housing the information? Speaker shared with the group the issues, costs and benefits that were considered as the options were weighed.
Preservation of Digital Assets
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" 'Achieving Permanence' for Born Digital Data"
Ed Southern, North Carolina Office of Archives and History
This session regarded the administrative side of "achieving permanence" for digital data. While achievement may not be the result, the speaker emphasized the need to try, especially for born-digital materials with permanent value. The speaker also posed the following questions: How do you deal administratively with moving from microfilm to digital for certain series? What are the problems in educating both the computer novices and the IT professionals who assume digital can last forever? How does one deal with agency demands and political pressures?
"Archives in the 21st Century"
Adam Jansen, Washington State Archives
In order to preserve their electronic records, the Washington State Digital Archives utilizes a multi-pronged approach. This session detailed some of the steps being used to ensure long term access to electronic records.
Link: http://www.digitalarchives.wa.gov/default.aspx
"Categories of Digital Preservation Service from Institutional Repositories: Preliminary Thoughts"
Cal Lee, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Discussed the initiative at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to develop an institutional repository. The committee undertaking this work is explicitly devoted to taking on issues of long-term digital preservation. One vital consideration is what level of digital preservation service the University commits to providing to particular categories of contributors and types of contributions to the repository. Summarized some of the committee's efforts to identify specific levels of commitment.
Presentation (PDF Format)
"Digital Repositories and Preservation: Digital Preservation, Best Practices"
Tim Tamminga, Endeavor Information Systems
State and national libraries have a mandate to gather, manage, preserve and provide access to their states’ or countries’ cultural heritage. Most of that heritage is now digital and is difficult to gather and easy to lose. What would the technology for long term preservation and permanent access look like? Endeavor is working with several national libraries in the design and implementation of an OAIS-based preservation platform. This platform is intended to enable the ingest, management and preservation of a nation’s digital heritage. More importantly, the platform is also intended to provide access to that heritage for the national or state library’s patrons. The discussion provided an overview of the critical need to build a practical solution for digital preservation and how this might be accomplished.
"E-mail Preservation Project at the North Carolina Office of Archives and History"
Druscie Simpson, North Carolina Office of Archives and History
The primary goal of the Email Preservation Project was to research and test methods to create a facility that would allow us to preserve email independent of the software used to create the record. The North Carolina Office of Archives and History currently possesses email from Governor Jim Hunt's administration and will soon be receiving similar records from Governor Mike Easley's office. Governor Hunt's office email has been appraised and culled to create the core email for preservation. However, the email originally existed as a Microsoft Outlook .pst file and could only be accessed using the version of Microsoft Outlook supported by Microsoft. As a result of this project they tested various programs that are in the development stage to convert email from Microsoft's proprietary .pst format to a non-proprietary and stable XML format. A core software conversion "engine" has been developed. And they have built a simple and secure control center to allow the administration and selection of accounts to archives, and to report on the status of each account.
"Future Digital System (FDsys) at the GPO"
Kate Villano, Government Printing Office
GPO's Future Digital System (FDsys) will allow federal content creators to easily create and submit content that can then be preserved, authenticated, managed and delivered upon request. This future digital system, scheduled for operation in December 2007, will form the core of GPO's future operations. Included in the FDsys will be all known Federal Government documents within the scope of GPO's Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), whether printed or born digital. Content may include text and associated graphics, video and sound and other forms of content that emerge. The FDsys preservation function will enable comprehensive, timely, permanent public access to the final published, official versions of U.S. Government publications in digital formats, by the retention of faithful, fully functional master files of content, and the performance of processes which assure ongoing usability of those files.
Link: http://www.gpo.gov/projects/fdsys.htm
"Kodak Archive Writer"
Elree Smith, North Carolina Office of the Secretary of State
Discussed the research conducted while developing the justification for moving toward a digital environment in the Department of the Secretary of State. The end result of the planning and justification was the purchasing of a Kodak Archive Writer, a device that converts digital images to microfilm.
"OCLC Digital Archive at the California State Library"
Janet Coles, California State Library
The California State Library is using the OCLC Digital Archive (DA) toolset to establish an "interim" program to permanently preserve and provide access to electronic state publications. Together the OCLC DA tools provide a tested, production-level, and relatively affordable solution to digital archiving and access. Utilizing technology and processes based on current digital archive standards (OAIS, METS, etc.), in most cases the OCLC DA can be implemented quickly, without the need for local IT development. The tools are designed to interface with the legacy systems and standards most libraries use to generate descriptive metadata and provide access to publications (OCLC WorldCat/library catalogs/MARC 21, etc.), and also with newer standards (Dublin Core, HTML, RDF). A brief demonstration of the OCLC Digital Archive tools was given, along with a short discussion of the pros and cons of using the DA, and an outline of how the California State Library plans to proceed with its digital archiving program.
"Open Document Format, Massachusetts and the World"
Will Rodger, Computer and Communications Industry Association
The digital era is barely sixty years old, yet records from it have already been lost, many likely forever. Many, if not most such data losses spring from incompatibilities among hardware and software. Faced with data saved in unfamiliar and unintelligible formats, archivists are increasingly looking for non-proprietary ways to save documents for posterity. Recent initiatives by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and numerous other governments suggest that OpenDocument Format (ODF) is the best single answer yet. ODF is the first fully featured document format that can be used and completely implemented by anyone free of charge. Unlike the .doc, .xls and .ppt formats most of us know, ODF is entirely "future proof." Its open nature means that no vendor can lock in any user to current or future versions of its software. StarOffice, OpenOffice, IBM's Workplace software, KOffice and AbiWord use the format today, many others are expected to follow. Open technologies have revolutionized the digital world. Just as TCP/IP, HTML, POP, UNIX and the open interfaces of today's phone system led to dramatic growth in networks, ODF backers are convinced that ODF will soon be the lingua franca of the archive and the network alike.
"Preservation of Digital Assets: Storage and Protection of Digital Assets"
Debra Spruill, OCLC Preservation Services Center
OCLC Preservation Service Centers sees digital preservation planning as more than selecting which materials should be digitized. Planning should also include the purpose of the digital collection, its intended audience, and what the planned interface should be.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
Link: http://www.oclc.org/preservation/
"Preservation of Kentucky Governor’s Web Records"
Glen McAninch, Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives
Some of the electronic records from the Office of the Governor that have been accessioned consist of web pages that were available on the Internet from the administration of Governor Paul Patton and from the current Governor, Ernie Fletcher. These web pages consist of speeches, press releases, photographs, videos and documentation of conferences which are scheduled to come to the archives. These web records supplement and provide an index to paper and electronic records (digitized photos and videos) which Archives staff has accessioned from the agency that documents gubernatorial events. Research on preservation of the web records is being conducted via an NHPRC grant funded Persistent Archives Testbed project which is scheduled to be completed at the end of 2006. The project is exploring the use of grid technology which distributes records in geographically separated locations in a non-proprietary environment. The web links are preserved in a logical rather than absolute structure and the project has experimented with various conversion scenarios for the many formats of the web files.
Link: http://www.sdsc.edu/PAT/
"Preservation Strategies in the North Carolina Geospatial Data Archiving Project (NCGDAP)"
Steve Morris, North Carolina State University
NCSU Libraries and NC Center for Geographic Information & Analysis are partnering with Library of Congress on a project focused on preservation of state and local agency digital geospatial data. Digital geospatial data comes in two primary types: vector and raster. While the preservation challenges of raster (image) data are being tackled in many content domains, the challenges of vector data preservation are left primarily to the geospatial community. In the case of vector data—also known as point/line/polygon data—there are is no satisfactory, open format to support long-term maintenance of content. Particularly problematic are spatial databases, which may consist of multiple individual datasets or “data layers,” while also storing components such as behaviors, relationships, classification schemes, data models, or annotations that are external to or in addition to the datasets themselves. The project approach to handling geospatial formats was discussed.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
Link: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/ncgdap/
Repository Systems
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"Acquiring Digital Publication: Challenges and Successes"
Jim Kammerer, Montana State Library
The Montana State Library in May 2005 began a one year pilot test of the OCLC Digital Archive for the acquisition and preservation of digital state publications. Immediately they faced many questions: What is the collection development policy for digital state publications? How do we publicize this software? Should we publicize this software? How can we increase compliance specifically for digital publications? The speaker's presentation provided current answers to these questions, reasons for purchasing this particular software, and current challenges associated with acquisition of digital publications.
"Arizona Memory Project Access to Collections in the Digital Domain"
Marisa Ramirez,
Arizona State Library, Archives, and Public Records
The Arizona Memory Project, established by the Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records, is an online repository for digital collections from archives, libraries, museums, historical societies and other Arizona cultural institutions. The project has been in development since May 2005 and recently launched in March 2006. The lessons learned from developing this initiative were discussed.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
Link: http://azmemory.lib.az.us
"Digital Repository Pilot Tests: PTFS ArchivalWare and DSpace"
Ray Matthews, Utah State Library
The State of Utah has a new law (03/13/2006) requiring the State Library to manage a Digital Library for providing permanent public access to state and local government publications and requiring state and local governments to deposit digital copies of their publications. The State Library initiated a pilot project, 1st quarter 2006, collecting digital state publications using SirsiDynix Horizon Digital Library (i.e. PTFS ArchivalWare) after first experimenting with DSpace. The speaker discussed the rationale for the legislation; the selection criteria and their experience with this platform; anticipated issues of funding and operations; and prospects for interoperating with in-state digitization projects using DiMeMa's CONTENTdm.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
Link: http://www.le.state.ut.us/~2006/htmdoc/hbillhtm/HB0041.htm
Link: http://www.le.state.ut.us/~code/TITLE09/09_05.htm
"Electronic Documents Initiative: The Illinois State Library Depository"
Connie Frankenfeld, Illinois State Library
The Electronic Documents Initiative (EDI) has been developed by Andrew Bullen of the Illinois State Library and Larry Jackson of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign. Speaker demonstrated the interfaces, provided a high-level description of the system, and compared it to the Open Archival Information System and Trusted Digital Repository models.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
Handout (PDF Format)
Link: http://iledi.org/
"KSPACe: A Virtual Repository for Kansas State Publications"
Scott Leonard, Kansas State Historical Society
The Kansas State Historical Society (KSHS), in partnership with the State Library of Kansas, have built the Kansas State Publications Archival Collection (KSPACe) to house electronic state publications and other digital information from Kansas state government agencies. KSPACe is built upon DSpace, the open sourcs repository software developed by the MIT Libraries and HP. KSHS and the State Library have been working with DSpace since it was released to the public in the fall of 2002 and have built a small but growing collection of documents. Speaker discussed the initial pilot of KSPACe, issues that were encountered as the repository was built, the lessons learned along the way, and plans for the future.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
Link: http://www.kspace.org/
"NCSU Libraries: Digital Repository Activities"
James Jackson Sanborn, North Carolina State University
North Carolina State University Libraries has been planning, testing, and preparing for implementation a number of different repository activities. These repositories will, to various extents, be based around the open-source repository software DSpace. The three primary repository activities are: an archive of open-access faculty publications; an archive of electronic technical reports published by various NCSU campus units; and a repository of state and local government GIS data collected as part of a collaborative partnership with the North Carolina Center for Geographic Information and Analysis and the Library of Congress. The various projects were described, along with the architecture of the repository. Technical aspects of using DSpace for archiving materials was also discussed.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
"Open Source and Commercial Software to Create a Digital Archive"
Glen McAninch, Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives
Discussed software for creation of a Kentucky Electronic Records Archives. The Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives (KDLA) is collaborating with the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and with several archival institutions across the United States to conduct case studies that test the ability to implement the SDSC’s Storage Resource Broker (SRB) data grid technology using a variety of archival collections. The SDSC Storage Resource Broker (SRB) is an open source client-server middleware that provides a means for connecting heterogeneous data resources over a network and accessing data sets copied on to those resources. While the processes that are being automated by KDLA include: accessioning, arrangement, description, preservation, and access, the SRB software is particularly useful for the description and preservation processes. Both commercial and open source software that supplements automation of various archival functions is being used in conjunction with SRB as the Electronic Records Archives system is developed.
Link: http://www.npaci.edu/DICE/SRB
"Space Dilemmas with Digital Documents "
Debbie MacLeod, Colorado State Publications Library
Until recently Colorado had no server space to house digital documents. With their recent migration project they addressed this situation with IT. Their current solution, which may or may not work, is to store documents on the web server in a directory that matches their classification schedule.
"Wyoming State Library"
Emily Sieger,
Wyoming State Library
Described the depository program which dates back to Territorial times. Speaker outlined the statutory requirements, coordination with other state agencies, systems for access state publications and a new effort to preserve born digital documents.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
Resources/Workflows for Management of Digital Assets
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"Digital Documents at the New Mexico State Library: Workflows for Managing Digital Assets"
Marcia Smith, New Mexico State Library
The New Mexico State Library has been digitally archiving and providing public access to electronic and web-based state documents since 2003. In the course of the past 3 years they developed workflows with state agencies, the 24 depository libraries, and in house between Technical and Public Services Bureaus. This led to an efficient and effective Digital Documents Program for the State of New Mexico. Speaker presented a brief overview of the program, described these workflows in detail, and detailed the built-in flexibility that is needed in these workflows to accommodate changes in staff, time commitments, and budgets.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
"Data Validation and Manipulation Tools for NCGDAP"
Jim Tuttle, North Carolina State University
The North Carolina Geospatial Data Archiving Project (NCGDAP) is a three-year joint effort of the North Carolina State University Libraries and the North Carolina Center for Geographic Information and Analysis focused on collection and preservation of digital geospatial data resources from state and local government agencies. NCGDAP is being undertaken in partnership with the Library of Congress under the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP). Points addressed in this session included specific data validation and manipulation tools and how these fit into pre-ingest workflow.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
Link: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/ncgdap/
"Proposed System for Collection and Metadata Creation of State Publications"
Kristin Martin, State Library of North Carolina
The State Library of North Carolina has been piloting the collection of digital state publications during 2005. During the course of pilot test they explored the following issues: how to collect, describe, and store digital publications; and how the public can access digital publications. This work collecting a small number of publications has led to the development of an ideal workflow to build a repository of digital publications. The speaker presented the ideal workflow, described the portions they implemented, and the lessons they learned during the process.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
"Secretary of State Knowledge Base Program"
Elree Smith, North Carolina Office of the Secretary of State
Presentation included the workflow plan that was developed for the Corporations Division. Also discussed the model that is being developing that would allow the Corporations and the other Agency's divisions to take full advantage of the Secretary of State Knowledge Base (SOSKB) Program. Also, the speaker discussed the State of Minnesota Historical Society's "Electronic Records Management Guidelines"
Link: http://www.mnhs.org/preserve/records/electronicrecords/erguidelinestoc.html
"Workflow"
Michelle Gallinger, Library of Congress
Discussed the Library of Congress' web harvesting workflow.
"Workflows for Manipulating Geospatial and Dublin Core Metadata"
Rob Farrell, North Carolina State University
NCSU Libraries has been working on a joint effort with the North Carolina Center for Geographic Information and Analysis to archive digital geospatial data resources in North Carolina. This pilot project is funded through the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) in partnership with the Library of Congress. The speaker's presentation for this group focused on how to manipulate, extract, create, and error-check both the geospatial metadata and the Qualified Dublin Core metadata for DSpace.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
Link: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/ncgdap/
Jan Reagan, State Library of North Carolina
A taskforce of 6 staff from the State Library and State Archives in the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources were appointed by Library and Archives management in 2004 to address and explore the issues of digital preservation of state government information. The taskforce drafted a Digital Preservation Policy Framework based on the Cornell model in 2005 and presented it to the Department’s senior management for review and approval in early 2006. The Framework, which formalizes the Department’s commitment to lead state government in digital preservation activities; supports cooperative efforts between the State Library, State Archives, IT, and other state agencies; and provides the foundation for digital preservation policy and program development, was approved. Speaker discussed the strategies and processes that led to the appointment of the taskforce, how the taskforce worked together to create the Framework, the presentation to senior management, and next steps.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
Elree Smith, North Carolina Office of the Secretary of State
Discusses how the Agency's centralized digital image server fits into what the speaker referred to as the "Digital Agency". The digital image server is the key piece of equipment that will permit Agency-wide use of the Kodak Archive Writer from a single source. Speaker also discussed interaction with the Division of Archives and History in reviewing and modifying the Division's Retention Schedule.
William LeFurgy, Library of Congress
Discussion of progress to date concerning the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) approach. NDIIPP uses a decentralized technical approach in conjunction with cross-cutting collaboration among consortial partners.
Link: http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/
Kevin Marsh, Texas State Library and Archives
Speaker discussed the successes and failures of the Texas Records and Information Locator (TRAIL) program at the Texas State Library and Archives Commission from the organization aspect.
Link: http://www2.tsl.state.tx.us/trail/
Glen McAninch, Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives
The Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives is exploring a variety of organizational frameworks or partnerships to assure that electronic records with permanent value will be preserved on multiple servers disbursed geographically. The Department is discussing the sharing of storage among the participants of a National Historical Publications and Records Commission grant funded Persistent Archives Testbed Project (Michigan, Minnesota, and Ohio). Sustainability of the project necessitates the forming of a federation. The department has established a partnership with the agency responsible for the multi-agency state GIS system. Since these records have been scheduled as permanent records, the State Archives has accessioned copies of the raster images that have been loaded into the system, as well as working with the Division of Geographic Information to ensure that snapshots of the vector data are captured periodically and preserved. Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives (KDLA) is exploring the idea of sharing the preservation of state publications with Kentucky universities, two of whom are testing the use of LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) software for other projects. LOCKSS is a open source software that provides librarians with an easy and inexpensive way to collect, store, preserve, and provide access to their own, local copy of authorized content. The State Library Services Division, with the assistance of the Public Records Division, is responsible for cataloging state publications, including those in electronic format, and for providing access to the publication’s permanent URL via links in the catalog record. The presentation discussed the advantages and issues with each of these configurations.
Link: http://www.sdsc.edu/PAT/
Craig Neilson, Utah State Library
Utah is just now beginning to develop the tools to provide public access to digital state publications. Recently passed legislation initiated by the State Library authorizes them to preserve and provide access to these records through a digital library. They are now faced with the challenge of a statewide Information Technology reorganization and changes within the Department, as well as staffing and budget limitations. Speaker explored some of the political and organizational issues involved.
Prudence Backman, New York State Archives
The New York State Archives recently completed a two year cooperative grant with seven other repositories which virtually brought together digital collections and finding aids related to environmental history. One of the problems they faced was whether they should take a centralized or decentralized approach to housing the information? Speaker shared with the group the issues, costs and benefits that were considered as the options were weighed.
Ed Southern, North Carolina Office of Archives and History
This session regarded the administrative side of "achieving permanence" for digital data. While achievement may not be the result, the speaker emphasized the need to try, especially for born-digital materials with permanent value. The speaker also posed the following questions: How do you deal administratively with moving from microfilm to digital for certain series? What are the problems in educating both the computer novices and the IT professionals who assume digital can last forever? How does one deal with agency demands and political pressures?
Adam Jansen, Washington State Archives
In order to preserve their electronic records, the Washington State Digital Archives utilizes a multi-pronged approach. This session detailed some of the steps being used to ensure long term access to electronic records.
Link: http://www.digitalarchives.wa.gov/default.aspx
Cal Lee, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Discussed the initiative at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to develop an institutional repository. The committee undertaking this work is explicitly devoted to taking on issues of long-term digital preservation. One vital consideration is what level of digital preservation service the University commits to providing to particular categories of contributors and types of contributions to the repository. Summarized some of the committee's efforts to identify specific levels of commitment.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Tim Tamminga, Endeavor Information Systems
State and national libraries have a mandate to gather, manage, preserve and provide access to their states’ or countries’ cultural heritage. Most of that heritage is now digital and is difficult to gather and easy to lose. What would the technology for long term preservation and permanent access look like? Endeavor is working with several national libraries in the design and implementation of an OAIS-based preservation platform. This platform is intended to enable the ingest, management and preservation of a nation’s digital heritage. More importantly, the platform is also intended to provide access to that heritage for the national or state library’s patrons. The discussion provided an overview of the critical need to build a practical solution for digital preservation and how this might be accomplished.
Druscie Simpson, North Carolina Office of Archives and History
The primary goal of the Email Preservation Project was to research and test methods to create a facility that would allow us to preserve email independent of the software used to create the record. The North Carolina Office of Archives and History currently possesses email from Governor Jim Hunt's administration and will soon be receiving similar records from Governor Mike Easley's office. Governor Hunt's office email has been appraised and culled to create the core email for preservation. However, the email originally existed as a Microsoft Outlook .pst file and could only be accessed using the version of Microsoft Outlook supported by Microsoft. As a result of this project they tested various programs that are in the development stage to convert email from Microsoft's proprietary .pst format to a non-proprietary and stable XML format. A core software conversion "engine" has been developed. And they have built a simple and secure control center to allow the administration and selection of accounts to archives, and to report on the status of each account.
Kate Villano, Government Printing Office
GPO's Future Digital System (FDsys) will allow federal content creators to easily create and submit content that can then be preserved, authenticated, managed and delivered upon request. This future digital system, scheduled for operation in December 2007, will form the core of GPO's future operations. Included in the FDsys will be all known Federal Government documents within the scope of GPO's Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), whether printed or born digital. Content may include text and associated graphics, video and sound and other forms of content that emerge. The FDsys preservation function will enable comprehensive, timely, permanent public access to the final published, official versions of U.S. Government publications in digital formats, by the retention of faithful, fully functional master files of content, and the performance of processes which assure ongoing usability of those files.
Link: http://www.gpo.gov/projects/fdsys.htm
Elree Smith, North Carolina Office of the Secretary of State
Discussed the research conducted while developing the justification for moving toward a digital environment in the Department of the Secretary of State. The end result of the planning and justification was the purchasing of a Kodak Archive Writer, a device that converts digital images to microfilm.
Janet Coles, California State Library
The California State Library is using the OCLC Digital Archive (DA) toolset to establish an "interim" program to permanently preserve and provide access to electronic state publications. Together the OCLC DA tools provide a tested, production-level, and relatively affordable solution to digital archiving and access. Utilizing technology and processes based on current digital archive standards (OAIS, METS, etc.), in most cases the OCLC DA can be implemented quickly, without the need for local IT development. The tools are designed to interface with the legacy systems and standards most libraries use to generate descriptive metadata and provide access to publications (OCLC WorldCat/library catalogs/MARC 21, etc.), and also with newer standards (Dublin Core, HTML, RDF). A brief demonstration of the OCLC Digital Archive tools was given, along with a short discussion of the pros and cons of using the DA, and an outline of how the California State Library plans to proceed with its digital archiving program.
Will Rodger, Computer and Communications Industry Association
The digital era is barely sixty years old, yet records from it have already been lost, many likely forever. Many, if not most such data losses spring from incompatibilities among hardware and software. Faced with data saved in unfamiliar and unintelligible formats, archivists are increasingly looking for non-proprietary ways to save documents for posterity. Recent initiatives by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and numerous other governments suggest that OpenDocument Format (ODF) is the best single answer yet. ODF is the first fully featured document format that can be used and completely implemented by anyone free of charge. Unlike the .doc, .xls and .ppt formats most of us know, ODF is entirely "future proof." Its open nature means that no vendor can lock in any user to current or future versions of its software. StarOffice, OpenOffice, IBM's Workplace software, KOffice and AbiWord use the format today, many others are expected to follow. Open technologies have revolutionized the digital world. Just as TCP/IP, HTML, POP, UNIX and the open interfaces of today's phone system led to dramatic growth in networks, ODF backers are convinced that ODF will soon be the lingua franca of the archive and the network alike.
Debra Spruill, OCLC Preservation Services Center
OCLC Preservation Service Centers sees digital preservation planning as more than selecting which materials should be digitized. Planning should also include the purpose of the digital collection, its intended audience, and what the planned interface should be.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
Link: http://www.oclc.org/preservation/
Glen McAninch, Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives
Some of the electronic records from the Office of the Governor that have been accessioned consist of web pages that were available on the Internet from the administration of Governor Paul Patton and from the current Governor, Ernie Fletcher. These web pages consist of speeches, press releases, photographs, videos and documentation of conferences which are scheduled to come to the archives. These web records supplement and provide an index to paper and electronic records (digitized photos and videos) which Archives staff has accessioned from the agency that documents gubernatorial events. Research on preservation of the web records is being conducted via an NHPRC grant funded Persistent Archives Testbed project which is scheduled to be completed at the end of 2006. The project is exploring the use of grid technology which distributes records in geographically separated locations in a non-proprietary environment. The web links are preserved in a logical rather than absolute structure and the project has experimented with various conversion scenarios for the many formats of the web files.
Link: http://www.sdsc.edu/PAT/
"Preservation Strategies in the North Carolina Geospatial Data Archiving Project (NCGDAP)"
Steve Morris, North Carolina State University
NCSU Libraries and NC Center for Geographic Information & Analysis are partnering with Library of Congress on a project focused on preservation of state and local agency digital geospatial data. Digital geospatial data comes in two primary types: vector and raster. While the preservation challenges of raster (image) data are being tackled in many content domains, the challenges of vector data preservation are left primarily to the geospatial community. In the case of vector data—also known as point/line/polygon data—there are is no satisfactory, open format to support long-term maintenance of content. Particularly problematic are spatial databases, which may consist of multiple individual datasets or “data layers,” while also storing components such as behaviors, relationships, classification schemes, data models, or annotations that are external to or in addition to the datasets themselves. The project approach to handling geospatial formats was discussed.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
Link: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/ncgdap/
Jim Kammerer, Montana State Library
The Montana State Library in May 2005 began a one year pilot test of the OCLC Digital Archive for the acquisition and preservation of digital state publications. Immediately they faced many questions: What is the collection development policy for digital state publications? How do we publicize this software? Should we publicize this software? How can we increase compliance specifically for digital publications? The speaker's presentation provided current answers to these questions, reasons for purchasing this particular software, and current challenges associated with acquisition of digital publications.
Marisa Ramirez, Arizona State Library, Archives, and Public Records
The Arizona Memory Project, established by the Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records, is an online repository for digital collections from archives, libraries, museums, historical societies and other Arizona cultural institutions. The project has been in development since May 2005 and recently launched in March 2006. The lessons learned from developing this initiative were discussed.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
Link: http://azmemory.lib.az.us
Ray Matthews, Utah State Library
The State of Utah has a new law (03/13/2006) requiring the State Library to manage a Digital Library for providing permanent public access to state and local government publications and requiring state and local governments to deposit digital copies of their publications. The State Library initiated a pilot project, 1st quarter 2006, collecting digital state publications using SirsiDynix Horizon Digital Library (i.e. PTFS ArchivalWare) after first experimenting with DSpace. The speaker discussed the rationale for the legislation; the selection criteria and their experience with this platform; anticipated issues of funding and operations; and prospects for interoperating with in-state digitization projects using DiMeMa's CONTENTdm.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
Link: http://www.le.state.ut.us/~2006/htmdoc/hbillhtm/HB0041.htm
Link: http://www.le.state.ut.us/~code/TITLE09/09_05.htm
Connie Frankenfeld, Illinois State Library
The Electronic Documents Initiative (EDI) has been developed by Andrew Bullen of the Illinois State Library and Larry Jackson of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign. Speaker demonstrated the interfaces, provided a high-level description of the system, and compared it to the Open Archival Information System and Trusted Digital Repository models.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
Handout (PDF Format)
Link: http://iledi.org/
Scott Leonard, Kansas State Historical Society
The Kansas State Historical Society (KSHS), in partnership with the State Library of Kansas, have built the Kansas State Publications Archival Collection (KSPACe) to house electronic state publications and other digital information from Kansas state government agencies. KSPACe is built upon DSpace, the open sourcs repository software developed by the MIT Libraries and HP. KSHS and the State Library have been working with DSpace since it was released to the public in the fall of 2002 and have built a small but growing collection of documents. Speaker discussed the initial pilot of KSPACe, issues that were encountered as the repository was built, the lessons learned along the way, and plans for the future.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
Link: http://www.kspace.org/
James Jackson Sanborn, North Carolina State University
North Carolina State University Libraries has been planning, testing, and preparing for implementation a number of different repository activities. These repositories will, to various extents, be based around the open-source repository software DSpace. The three primary repository activities are: an archive of open-access faculty publications; an archive of electronic technical reports published by various NCSU campus units; and a repository of state and local government GIS data collected as part of a collaborative partnership with the North Carolina Center for Geographic Information and Analysis and the Library of Congress. The various projects were described, along with the architecture of the repository. Technical aspects of using DSpace for archiving materials was also discussed.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
Glen McAninch, Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives
Discussed software for creation of a Kentucky Electronic Records Archives. The Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives (KDLA) is collaborating with the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and with several archival institutions across the United States to conduct case studies that test the ability to implement the SDSC’s Storage Resource Broker (SRB) data grid technology using a variety of archival collections. The SDSC Storage Resource Broker (SRB) is an open source client-server middleware that provides a means for connecting heterogeneous data resources over a network and accessing data sets copied on to those resources. While the processes that are being automated by KDLA include: accessioning, arrangement, description, preservation, and access, the SRB software is particularly useful for the description and preservation processes. Both commercial and open source software that supplements automation of various archival functions is being used in conjunction with SRB as the Electronic Records Archives system is developed.
Link: http://www.npaci.edu/DICE/SRB
Debbie MacLeod, Colorado State Publications Library
Until recently Colorado had no server space to house digital documents. With their recent migration project they addressed this situation with IT. Their current solution, which may or may not work, is to store documents on the web server in a directory that matches their classification schedule.
Emily Sieger, Wyoming State Library
Described the depository program which dates back to Territorial times. Speaker outlined the statutory requirements, coordination with other state agencies, systems for access state publications and a new effort to preserve born digital documents.
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
Marcia Smith, New Mexico State Library
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
Jim Tuttle, North Carolina State University
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
Link: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/ncgdap/
Kristin Martin, State Library of North Carolina
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
Elree Smith, North Carolina Office of the Secretary of State
Link: http://www.mnhs.org/preserve/records/electronicrecords/erguidelinestoc.html
Michelle Gallinger, Library of Congress
Rob Farrell, North Carolina State University
Presentation (PDF Format)
Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
Link: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/ncgdap/