Building the foundation for success in implementing digital preservation at your library (Updated: December 20, 2010)

(Note: Due to some excellent reader feedback, I've update this original post to include additional sources of information)

A topic we’ve been raising in the regional director’s meetings that Ex Libris has been conducting around North America is not only the opportunity digital preservation represents for libraries and the profession of librarianship, but also the need for library administrators to get library staff trained in doing digital preservation. It's important to understand that this is part of the foundational work for engaging in an successful digital preservation initiative such as putting Rosetta in production at your library.

There are many ways to go about doing this, starting with readings and online courses and progressing through formal courses of study. In order to help library administrators achieve the goal of getting staff trained, we'd like to share some links/sites where information about digital preservation training can be found.

1. Required Reading. The report “Sustainable Economics for a Digital Planet: Ensuring Long-term Access to Digital Information” should be essential reading for all librarians planning a digital preservation initiative.
2. Online Tutorials. One of the best set of online tutorials (and workshops are available as well, check the link for dates) are those from The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). The program is called the Digital Preservation Management Workshop and Tutorial. Based on work done at Cornell University and supported with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). These tutorials are available at the website in English, French and Italian. Another solid program is the one available from The Digital Preservation Training Programme. Run out of the U.K., by the University of London Computer Centre (ULCC) but also offering information online and a variety of courses in various formats, the program is designed to “provides the skills and knowledge necessary for institutions to combine organizational and technological perspectives, and devise an appropriate response to the challenges that digital preservation needs present.” (Update: Due to the efforts of experts at Virginia Tech and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill there are some wonderful modules, journal links, papers and reports available through the Digital Curation Exchange. They also participate in creating an entry at Wikiversity. See the Digital Library entry. Look at the Core Topics, Section 8 to find content specific to Digital Preservation). All of this is well worth checking out.
3. Online Introductory Videos. YouTube has a number of light-hearted, high-level videos that can be useful in orienting administrators, funders and staff to the basics of digital preservation. Freely available and each being around five minutes in length, these are very useful.
4. Online Training Videos. Some excellent training videos can be found here covering a wide range of digital preservation topics. Also available for free, these videos are a wonderful asset for libraries looking for low cost ways to get staff trained.
5. Slides. The Slideshare website also offers a wide range of presentations on digital preservation. There are many, many presentations here, so expect to spend some time examining these with regard to the age of the presentation, credentials of those who posted them and overall suitability to your needs before disseminating widely. A good starting point is this set.
6. Toolkits. The Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) has developed and made available some excellent toolkits for libraries to use in planning and assessing their readiness for digital preservation. The planning toolkit provides a questionnaire and sample policies that will assist in planning a digital preservation policy, an essential foundation for digital preservation services. The readiness toolkit offers a wealth of resources to use in assessing your library’s readiness to engage in digital preservation. Some other good policy toolkits can be found at the National Library of Australia’s website and yet another example is available at the the European website, Electronic Resource and Preservation Access Network.
7. Degreed programs. For those library administrators wishing to have staff with degrees specialized in digital preservation there are some options. In North America, the University of Michigan, School of Information has developed a program that provides specialization in Preservation of Information. (Update: The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, School of Information and Library Science also offers a course in digital preservation and access - Course INLS: 752). In the U.K. the University of Dundee, the Center for Archive and Information Studies (CAIS) also offers programs in digital preservation. Of course, these represent a serious commitment of both staff time and library funds to send staff through this program, but for those institutions who want to seriously embrace this new opportunity for libraries, it would likely be a very smart investment.

Digital preservation represents a continuing and exciting new opportunity for librarianship and the ability to show demonstrable value. Librarians have expertise in metadata/taxonomy/ontology, access and preservation. When that knowledge base is updated and married with expertise in digital preservation, it creates a powerful new value proposition for parent organizations and administrators.

Also, as I note when we conduct the regional directors’ meetings: When you train staff in this field, you also need to be sure you’re offering them an attractive set of reasons to want to continue to be a part of your organization. This is because they will be entering a rapidly growing field of needed expertise. People with this knowledge are going to be in demand. Be forewarned.

Finally, if you’re coming to ALA Mid-winter in San Diego, Ex Libris is offering a seminar “Stop the loss of digital content—with Ex Libris Rosetta" on Saturday, January 8, 2011, 1:30 pm–3:30 pm (Pacific Time) at the San Diego Marriott & Marina (Register here). You’ll have the chance to hear a university librarian talk about his plans to boldly move into the realm of true digital preservation, and an executive program manager responsible for moving Rosetta into full production in a large library environment in a matter of just months, reveal how it was done. I think you’ll find it is a great opportunity to start building the foundation for success in implementing digital preservation at your library.

Reverberations and amplifications on some important issues for libraries

Recently a couple of issues I’ve raised here have been addressed in some other blogs. They provide other points of views and document other dimensions of the issues involved. So, if you haven’t had a chance to catch these posts, I highly recommend them:

1. Abe Lederman of Deep Web Technologies wrote an interesting post linking the European Union case filed against Google this past week to what both the Federated Search Blog in a recent post and I’ve written about recently in a couple of posts (here and here) concerning the Charleston Conference Face-Off and biased search result sets. Librarians should not turn a blind eye to the potential problems here. It is important to understand that commercial interests can potentially void some of the checks and balances that should be preserved in the library supply chain. In this case, it can be done by separating the purchase of discovery/search tools from the purchase of content. If this isn’t done, as Abe points out in his headline, “If Google might be doing it…” there is no reason to think it can’t happen to the vendor supply chain for libraries as well. It’s a point well worth remembering.
2. Another blog post I found particularly interesting is one by John Wilkin, Executive Director of HathiTrust and Librarian at the University of Michigan Library. His post, entitled: “Open Bibliographic Data: How Should the Ecosystem Work?” is required reading as are the comments that follow. While I won’t say I agree with all of John’s points, he makes a number of very pointed and well-deserved remarks aimed at OCLC that I do agree with. These include:

   “ By walling off the data, we, the members of the OCLC cooperative, lose any possibility of community input around a whole host of problems bigger than the collectivity of libraries”

   and

   "OCLC should define its preeminence not by how big or how strong the walls are, but by how good and how well-integrated the data are.”

   It’s a different take on what I said in my post, i.e. OCLC should stand for Open and Cooperative Library Content. Karen Coyle, in the comments section notes:

   “If you cannot release your bibliographic data openly, you cannot participate in the linked data movement.”

   The one thing there seems to be a growing consensus about is that clearly some change is needed in Dublin, Ohio.

All of these posts point out that librarians must and can't be passive consumers in the current information landscape. I've written about this in a post before and what I said then is especially true during periods of rapid change and economic crisis. All too often in these times, people simply want to leave it to others and trust they’ll do what is best to represent your interests. Not to be pessimistic here, but that’s naïve and it doesn’t relieve you of the responsibility to make known what is wanted and needed to serve the users and organization with which your library is associated and to do so in the most efficient and effective manner possible.