Digital Preservation and Information : November 2014

Saturday, November 15, 2014

Digital Preservation

What is digital preservation?

What problems are involved

What exactly are we trying to preserve?

Below is a video of the major themes of our blog. The links seen in the video can be found here , here, and here

Friday, November 14, 2014

An Analog Girl Being Pulled into a Digital World

A few years ago I remember doing research on a paper for a class that I had hoped to turn into a journal article. My area of research focused on African American women in Philadelphia during the Civil War and Reconstruction period. Through some preliminary online research I discovered that the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP) had recently acquired diaries of Emilie Davis. Davis was a young African American woman who lived in Philadelphia during the war and the diaries that HSP acquired dated from 1863-1865. At the time I was living in New York and Philadelphia was a hour and a half away. In order to take advantage of a full day of research, I left my Brooklyn apartment at 6am to take the 7:30am bus to Philadelphia. When I finally arrived at the HSP at 10am, I requested the diaries and excitedly opened the box that held 3 hand-sized booklets. The pages were yellow and fragile. Davis’s writing was barely legible due to fading from age and Davis’s poor penmanship. I was nervous that I would ruin this artifact with every page that I turned. Unfortunately, I was unable to finish my research before I had to return to New York. Months later I traveled back to the HSP to look at the diaries again, but they were out for digitization at Pennsylvania State University’s Richards Civil War Center through its People’s Contest, A Civil War Era Digital Archiving Project. Transcriptions of Emilie Davis’s Diaries can be found online at Memorable Days: The Emilie Davis Diaries which is a Website hosted by Villanova University.

The digitization and transcription of Emilie Davis’s Diaries was a multi-institutional project that will save future researchers countless hours in travel and provided more access to these important materials. In addition, it reduces the physical usage of the diaries thus prolonging their life. However, even as the archival community moves toward digitization because of the increase of digital-born records, converting analog records remains a controversial practice for the same reasons that make preserving digital-born records so difficult.

Several reasons for the controversy over the digitalization of analog items lies in the ability of archivists to migrate the data across platforms as older hardware, software, and storage systems become obsolete. Think about the transition of storage medium from 8-inch floppy disks, to 3.5-inch floppy disk, to zip disk, to flash drives, and now to cloud storage. Most of that data on those first generation floppy disk cannot be easily accessed today (Ex: Andy Warhol’s Computer Art). Essentially, you have created another preservation problems when you create a digital surrogate of analog materials. Also, preservation is about maintaining the content, structure, and context of documents, and all of these can be easily manipulated within the digital format that is not possible in analog format. This threatens the authenticity and integrity of materials which is an inherent function of archives.

These reasons led Abby Smith (1999) to advocate for a shift to digitalization in order to provide more access to users of libraries and archives, but she emphatically declared that digitization was not a form of preservation. She writes that “Though digitization is sometimes loosely referred to as preservation, it is clear that so far, digital resources are at their best when facilitating access to information and weakest when assigned the tradition library responsibility of preservation…Digital imaging is not preservation, however. Much is gained by digitizing, but permanence and authenticity, at this juncture of technological development, are not those gains” (Smith, 1999, p. 3-4). Two other issues that quelled Smith’s excitement for digitization were cost and time. When Smith wrote this for the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) in 1999, digitization was still an emerging process. Since then advancements in technology have been made that significantly reduce the cost and time of digitization.

By 2004 beliefs about digitization began to change when Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Preservation of Research Libraries Materials Committee issued the policy statement “Recognizing Digitization as a Preservation Reformatting Method” in which it stated that “digital reformatting should now be considered a valid choice among various methods for preserving paper-based materials” (Arthur, Byrne, Long, Montori, & Nadler, 2004, p.172). The ARL urged for the further development of standards and best practices for reformatting and metadata. Where Smith was cautious around issues of obsolescence, the ARL urged that research libraries must be at the forefront of digitalization wave in order to help develop better preservation plans for digital materials. It writes, “Libraries cannot wait for these solutions to be completely settled before testing the waters. Therefore, we must be prepared for persistent technological change” (Arthur et al., 2004, p. 174).

The Library of Congress have embraced digitization as a form of preservation. The video below discusses the relationship between physical and digital preservation:

For some institutions, digitization is the only preservation solution. Without it researchers would be completely denied access to the content of analog materials. Lacking funds for tradition preservation, the archivists at the University of Southern Mississippi Libraries relied on their digitization program in the absence of a conservator and a microfilming program to preserve 72 damaged negatives from The Robert Waller Photograph Collection (Capell 2010). These negatives would have otherwise been destroy if not for their importance to the history of the University of Southern Mississippi and the surrounding community. The negatives were digitized with a negative scanner and the originals were placed in cold storage until funds became available for traditional preservation. The scans preserved and made available the content for the university to use in its upcoming centennial celebration and for researchers. Without digitization, these materials might not have ever been seen by the public again.

Even when materials are not significantly damaged or fragile, libraries and archives have chosen digital preservation over traditional methods of preservation such as microfilming. Colorado State University Libraries (CSUL) decided that digitization was the best solution for their project to preserve monographs on agricultural and rural life in the states from the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The primary reason that they chose this method is because it provided users more access to the materials. CSUL, however, realized that the success of this project relied on having a good long-term digital preservation strategy with “backup copies, non-proprietary formats, migration arrangements, and emulations plans” (Merger & Draper, 2011, p. 63).

While I do not regret taking those early morning bus rides years ago to examine the diaries of Emilie Davis, I would have been just as satisfied to access a digitized and transcribed copy from my couch in Brooklyn after my initial visit. Davis’s diaries have an intrinsic value. Nothing can replace the feeling of paper that is over a century old, but we have do have to guard against its deterioration so that it is around to be examined by future generations.

Questions

Is digitization preservation or is it a tool of preservation that provides more access to people?
What is more important for analog materials, the information it holds or the artifact itself?
Digitization seems to be replacing analog preservation, but is digital preservation a quality alternative to analog preservation?

Relevant Terms

Born Digital (digital-born)-records that began their lives as digital material.
Digital/data migration-Transferring digital resources from one hardware or software generation to the next in order to overcome obsolescence (http://www.dpconline.org/advice/preservationhandbook/introduction/definitions-and-concepts)
Digital surrogates-Digital representations of analog documents. This includes but not limited to paper documents, sound recordings, and photographs.
Emulation- “A means of overcoming technological obsolescence of hardware and software by developing techniques for imitating obsolete systems on future generations of computers.” (http://www.dpconline.org/advice/preservationhandbook/introduction/definitions-and-concepts)
Preservation-Interrelated activities used to preserve the usability of artifacts and manuscripts. It is one of the key task of archivists. For the most part, librarians do not have to worry about this as much because they do not deal with unique materials as often as archivists.
Reformatting-To copy a material from one storage medium to another storage medium (Hunter 264)
The Digital Preservation Coalition provides a more comprehensive list of important terms on its Introduction - Definitions and Concepts Page.

Reference

Arthur, K., Byrne, S., Long, E., Montori, C. Q., & Nadler, J. (2004). Recognizing digitization as a preservation reformatting method. Microform & Imaging Review, 33, 171-180.
Capell, L. (2010). Digitization as a preservation method for damaged acetate negatives: A case study. The American Archivist, 73(1), 235–249.
Hunter, G. S. (2003). Developing and maintaining practical archives: A how-to-do-it manual. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers.
Meger, A. L. & Draper, D (2012). Digital preservation and access of agricultural materials. Journal of Agricultural & Food Information, 13 (1), 45-63. http://10.1080/10496505.2012.637437
Smith, A. (1999). Why Digitize? Available from http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub80-smith/pub80.html

Thursday, November 13, 2014

What Can Get Lost in the Clouds

We've All Been There...
It would be a safe bet to say that anyone reading this blog has lost information in a digital format. Maybe you were writing your term paper and you forgot to save it. You could have made the mistake of taking your flash drive out too soon and corrupting the file. You have may have mislabeled it and been unable to find the file among all of your other files. In earlier years, you may have copied music on a CD to find that its quality had deteriorated. Even further back you may have put it on a floppy disk only to have some magnetic force destroy it. While CDs, tapes, and floppy disks, and flash drives all used to be common forms of storing information, the next generation of data storage is Cloud storage.

Cloud vs the Others

Cloud storage is are hosted electronic storage services over the internet Mavodza, 2012 November, p. 133). Cloud Storage seems to be a cheap panacea to all of the problems that plagued older digital storage devices. Cloud servers can hold more data than traditional storage (Breeding, 2013, p. 25). The servers typically are not lost, dropped, or damaged by the environment. Cloud servers are their own backups as well, as most cloud services have mirror sites that produce copies of your data and send it to other servers around the world (Dougherty, 2009, p. 599). Thus making sure that if one server goes down, that your information will be retrievable from another one of their servers. While Cloud storage is an advancement over CDs, tapes, flopy disks, and flash drives; Cloud storage still has some important vulnerabilities that can lead to data loss as well.

Transfer Problems
Cloud storage depends on information being transferred from one computer to another, and any transfer that occurs offers the possibility that the data can be lost (Dougherty, 2010, p. 445 and Delozier 2013, p. 65). The corruption of a few bytes of information can lead to the entire digital item being inaccessible. This can occur because as the data moves from one location to another fluctuations in energy output, internet connectivity, and weather conditions can affect the complete transfer of all the information (Dougherty, 2010, p. 445 and Delozier 2013, p. 65). If enough information is disrupted, the file can be rendered useless. If this error is not found before the original hard copy or original digital file is deleted, this can lead to the loss of that data.

Hackers

Data loss can happen accidentally, but the one of the biggest reasons for data loss on a cloud comes from the data being intercepted by an unauthorized user (Samson, 2013 and Mavodza, 2012 November, p.135). As more data is sent to digital servers that can be accessed from anywhere in the world, more people looking to illegally access that material have the ability to try to intercept and steal that data. Hackers can infiltrate Cloud storage and data can either be literally lost from being deleted, or data can be lost in the sense that it did not go to its intended user (Samson, 2013). Both instances of data loss can be damaging in their own way. Having digital data deleted means that it can actually be lost forever if the user did not use a secondary storage option for the digital data. Data that is stolen can be used by the thief to steal credit cards, bank account numbers, or other personal information that can damage a persons finances or reputation. Data lost because it is stolen has made important news of late as large corporations like Target have comprised their customers credit, and celebrities have found that their personal pictures posted for all to see.

Limited Access
Cloud storage can also lead to a loss freedom to access your digital data. In order to access information from a Cloud server you have to be connected to the internet (Breeding, 2013, p. 24), and this can be frustrating in remote areas with no internet connections. Cloud services offer a cheap alternative to physical storage space, but are generally not completely free for large corporations and information institutions (Breeding, 2013, p. 25). If a user cannot pay for the cloud storage they are using, this may lead to services being stopped, data being locked, or data being deleted. Since most Cloud services are administered by sources external from a company, anyone who uses a Cloud service is ultimately at the mercy of the Cloud company as to whether or not their data is safe. It is even possible for Cloud services to go out of business and leave their customers with no option but lose data that they have no digital room to store.

Lost In Translation
The last concern is the loss of quality as information is changed from a physical format to digital. The resolution used for pictures, video, audio, and texts as they are converted to digital format can lead to a loss of preservation quality (Conway, 2010, p. 70-72) . The color of pictures, the detail of the video, the crispness of the audio, and the clarity of the text can be distorted as they are converted to digital format. Just as translations can change the meaning of a song, book, or movie, so can these digital translations change the original intent, meaning, or impact of the data being converted to digital format.

Questions to think about

1) How can people protect themselves from their data being permanently lost from anyone of the issues previously mentioned?

2) What right should people have to the data they store on a Cloud server, especially when they are paying to use the Cloud storage?

3) What standards should be put in place for LIS institutions as to the quality of the digital artifacts they are creating of physical artifacts that they own?

Works Cited

Breeding, Marshall. (2013, March). "The Systems Librarian: Digital Archiving in the Age of CloudComputing". Computers in Libraries 33(2), (pg. 22-26). Retrieved from: http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.wayne.edu/docview/1315341952?accountid=14925
Conway, Paul. (2010, January). "Preservation in the Age of Google: Digitization, Digital Preservation, and Dilemmas". The Library Quarterly 80(1), (pg. 61-79).DOI 10.1086/648463
Delozier, Eric P. (2013). "Anonymity and Authenticity in the Cloud: Issues and Applications". OCLC Systems and Services 29(2), (p. 65-77). DOI 10.1108/10650751311319278
Dougherty, William C. (2009, November). "Preservation of Digital Assets: One Approach". The Journal of Academic Librarianship 35(6), (pg. 599-602). DOI 10.1016/j.acalib.2009.08.008
Dougherty, William C. (2010, September). "Can Digital Resources Truly Be Preserved?". The Journal of Academic Librarianship 36(5), (pg. 445-448). DOI 10.1016/j.acalib.2010.06.016
Mavodza, Judith. (2013). "The Impact of Cloud Computing on the Future of Academic Library Practices and Services". New Library World 114(3/4), (p.132-141). DOI 10.1108/03074801311304041
Samson, Ted. (2013, February 25th). "9 Threats to Cloud Computing Security". InfoWorld Retrieved from: http://www.infoworld.com/article/2613560/cloud-security/9-top-threats-to-cloud-computing- security.html

Saturday, November 15, 2014

Further Reading on Digitial Preservation