PARSE.Insight and APARSEN Reaching a Common Vision for digital preservation research

David Giaretta

• PARSE.Insight – Important source of information about users and

their views– Identified fundamental threats which

infrastructure can address• APARSEN– Creating a common vision for digital preservation

research– Create a Virtual centre of Excellence

Common Vision

Overview of APARSEN

• FP7 Network of Excellence• 6.8 M€ from EU• 4 years• 32 partners

Rationale and scope• Funding for an NoE in Call 6 is targeted at reinforcing excellence in Europe by structuring

the research capacity in those research disciplines which remain fragmented and would significantly benefit from consolidation. Regarding the research fields under this call (digital preservation, digital libraries, cultural heritage) previously funded work in form of Networks of Excellence (i.e. DELOS and EPOCH) should be taken into account. It is not excluded to present proposals for further integration of research capacity in digital libraries or cultural heritage. However, this should be well justified in terms of the need to overcome continuing and harmful fragmentation and not duplicate the essence of the work already done. The scale of the digital preservation challenge, both in quantity and complexity, goes

beyond the capacity of single institutions or sectors. To tackle this challenge adequately requires concerted and orchestrated efforts, critical mass, as well as synergies of ideas, technology solutions and practices – and this across

disciplines, organisations and across national borders. Stakeholders within and beyond the existing digital preservation community need to be mobilised. Consequently, there could be scope for a Network of Excellence in structuring digital preservation research for the future.

....

• Proposals should argue convincingly that the fragmentation of current research effort is hindering research and progress in the area, demonstrate clearly that they bring together existing European excellence in the different research fields involved, and be clear about the

potential for sustainable commitments between the research organisations post-project, including the potential for influence on and leverage of national research activities and funding.

Aims of the project

• The APARSEN NoE brings together an extremely diverse set of practitioner organisations and researchers in order to bring coherence, cohesion and continuity to research into barriers to the long-term accessibility and usability of digital information and data, exploiting our diversity by building a long-lived Virtual Centre of Digital Preservation Excellence.

Building on...

• OAIS Reference Model• CASPAR• PLANETS• DPE• SHAMAN• PARSE.Insight• LOTAR

• Alliance for Permanent Access• Audit & Certification standard• Industrial Vendors

} WePreserve

Why is APARSEN as it is?• Need to deal with all types of digitally encoded information

– Many complex things• Projects like CASPAR, SHAMAN have provided evidence that we

know how to approach this with intellectual rigor

– Research needed for specifics• Things are not cleanly split – RECURSION is key concept• PARSE.Insight has provided a great deal of evidence about what

people are concerned about• Audit & certification will be in place in the next year or so• Vision for 2020 and 2030 developed

Approach• use cross-sectoral cooperation to overcome

fragmentation of the research field and to avoid redundancy and duplication of effort;

• support sustainable integration of research resources and capacities (researchers, services, teams institutions, organisations);

• NoEs are expected to implement a Joint Programme of Activities that requires a formal commitment of the participating organisations.

COMMON TERMINOLOGY IS VITAL

Archival Information

Package

Preservation DescriptionInformation

Content Information further described by

Package Description

Packaging Information

derivedfrom

describedby

delimitedby

identifies

DataObject

RepresentationInformation

Physical Object

Digital Object

Structure Information

Semantic Information

Reference Information

Provenance Information

Context Information

Fixity Information

Other Representation

Information

Interpreted using

Bit

adds meaning

to

Access Rights

Information

Interpreted using

1

*

11...* OAIS Archival Information

Package

Where is Digital Preservation research done?

• Universities?• Libraries• Archives?• Scientific Research Laboratories?• Manufacturers?• Vendors?

The average annual resources devoted to digital preservation research by the consortium partners, over the past few years, is 500K€, so that a conservative estimate of the other digital preservation funding which will be leveraged by APARSEN will be approximately 50M€ over the lifetime of the project.

The funds spent annually on actual preservation of digital objects, including systems, software and hardware is much larger, well over 150M€ over the lifetime of the project.

After the project we believe that APARSEN will continue to influence these levels of expenditure.

• 32 Partners from–Research laboratories–National libraries–Manufacturers–Software vendors

PARTNERS

• AIRBUS• APA • BL• CERN • CINES• CINI • CSC • KNAW-DANS • DNB • DPC • ESA

• FORTH • FRD • FTK • GLOBIT • HA /AFPUM• ICT • IKI• INMARK • KB • LIBER

• LTU • MRL • ONB • SBA • STFC • STM • TESSELLA• UKDA• UNITN • UPAT

E-Infrastructures

Project profile & origins

19

Research (Digital Preservation)

Virtual Centre of Excellence

APARSENNetwork of Excellence

National libraries and

archives

Vendors:IBM/Microsoft

Tessella

Universities & Research Institutes

Big science: CERN/MPI/HA/

STFC/ CINES

Industrial:Airbus, SMEs

CASPAR

PLANETS SHAMAN

HLEG Sci data e-Infr

PARSE.Insight

HLEG Digital Library

ESA LTDP

APA

GENESI-DR

DPC, nestor, STM, LIBER

Users

Innovators

SCIDIP-ES

Integration

Vision

Internal workshops

Common tools & env

Staff exchangesResearch

subsetResearch subsetResearch

subsetResearch subsetResearch

subsetResearch subsetResearch

integration

Spread Excellence

European Organisations and

researchers

USAAsia

Australisia etc

Embed research

Internal sharing ideas

Refine and integrate ideas

Research

Formal qualifications

Training & awareness

Integrated research,

best practice, services,

tools

Vision is linked into all research WPs

Trust

Certification of repositoriesReputation and trustability of datasets, publications and peopleAuthenticityCommon testing environments

Sustainability

Business casesPreservationCost/benefit analysisTransfer of custody – who to hand over to and what to hand overStorage solutions

Usability

IntelligibilityUse by common toolsCross domain usabilityInteroperability

AccessIdentify of datasets, publication, peopleRights and responsibilitiesPolicies and governance

Magic?• no-one has all the answers, and no-one can even see

all the questions • despite that we all tend to defend our own area of

work in which we have invested effort

Approaches• no-one has all the answers, and no-one can even see

all the questions • despite that we all tend to defend our own area of

work in which we have invested effort• It is much easier to work within our own silos but

much more difficult to cut across the boundaries• It is easy to convince ourselves that our work has

wide applicability (if only others would recognise the brilliance of our work and use it!)

• There are many solutions in search of a problem

Testing• We are not mad• We do useful things• However we are forced to “over-sell” what we

do• APARSEN must try to provide a more realistic

view• Each tool/technique has strengths and

weaknesses, applies to some digital objects and not others

TESTING KEEPS US HONEST!