Introduction to the Planets digital preservation project

Disclosure and preservation Lisbon, September, 2007 Introduction to the Planets digital preservation project Adam Farquhar British Library, Project Coordinator 1 Goals Basic overview of the project Aims Team Value for Libraries and Archives Achievements and upcoming plans Basic use scenarios Lisbon, 9.2007 2 Planets overview A 4-year research and technology development project co-funded by the European Union to address core digital preservation challenges. Started June 2006 with €15m budget Coordinated by the British Library Involves 16 partners including national libraries and archives, leading technology companies and research universities Builds on strong digital archiving and preservation programmes Focuses on needs of Libraries and Archives Lisbon, 9.2007 3 Planets aims Increase Europe’s ability to ensure long-term access to its cultural and scientific heritage Improve decision-making about long term preservation Ensure long-term access to valued digital content Control the costs of preservation actions through increased automation, scaleable infrastructure Ensure wide adoption across the user community and establish market place for preservation services and tools Build practical solutions Integrate and extend existing expertise, designs and tools Deliver tools and services that can be used in an operational environment Lisbon, 9.2007 4 Motivations For national libraries & archives Have the legal responsibility and the legislative framework to safeguard digital information Have been collecting digital documents and records since 1982 Realize that meeting the challenge of preserving access goes beyond the capabilities of any single institution Have limited ability to ensure that today’s digital information will be accessible for future generations Realise that collaboration with research & ICT is essential Need pragmatic solutions here and now Preservation and access over the long term is their primary mission A solution that fails for content holders fails for everyone Lisbon, 9.2007 5 What’s in it for … The British Library? “Planets will provide the technology component of our digital preservation solution” Richard Boulderstone, BL Director, 15/06/07 Planets will enable us to Profile our digital collections against our policies Identify and diagnose problems in our digital collections Compare different treatment plans Select and implement treatment for a wide range of problems Verify that the treatment was successful Know how solutions work through empirical evidence … and encourage vendors and service providers to provide these capabilities to us Lisbon, 9.2007 6 Planets partners (1) The British Library National Library, Netherlands Austrian National Library State and University Library, Denmark Royal Library, Denmark National Archives, UK Swiss Federal Archives National Archives, Netherlands Lisbon, 9.2007 7 Planets partners (2) Tessella Plc IBM Netherlands Microsoft Research Austrian Research Centers GmbH Hatii at University of Glasgow University of Freiburg Technical University of Vienna University of Cologne Lisbon, 9.2007 8 Planets approach to digital preservation Planning services that empower organisations to define, evaluate, and execute preservation plans Methodologies, tools and services for Characterisation of digital objects Innovative solutions for Preservation Actions An Interoperability Framework which integrates extensible distributed services to provide one easily managed digital preservation system A Testbed enables objective evaluation of protocols, tools, services and plans based on scientific evidence Outreach, workshops and training to engage the user and vendor communities Lisbon, 9.2007 9 Planets architecture Lisbon, 9.2007 10 Scenario: Notice change in user community Sample policy: 90% of users can access all published reports Content profile: 5% of published reports in dvi format Usage profile: 98% of users can not view dvi files Identify possible plans (using PLATO) including Convert to PDF Convert to tiff On access conversion to PDF Provide users with viewer plug-in Provide emulation environment for 1990 workstation ☺ Select plan (using PLATO, testbed empirical data) Such as convert to PDF using dvi2ps | ps2pdf Convert content (using data registry) QA results (using comparison services) Ingest results into repository (using adaptor) Lisbon, 9.2007 11 Progress to date Established the project team and reached consensus about the project’s goals and structure Moved from requirements gathering into specification and implementation Developed prototype tools and services for preservation planning, preservation actions and preservation characterisation Deployed prototypes in the Planets framework Expert panel “very impressed” with the 1st year of work Moving into a new phase to establish framework and start to extend access, format range and scope of services Studying end-user behavior and long-term trends Lisbon, 9.2007 12 What to expect in the next 18 months Tools and services The PLATO preservation planning tool with decision support and risk assessment modules Automated collection profiling Validation services to evaluate preservation plan results Characterisation tools to extract and compare significant properties Next generation migration and emulation tools Downloadable “click-and-install” software package Machine interpretable languages For policies, tools, objects, significant properties Empirical evidence A Testbed to collect empirical data on preservation services Deeper understanding of end-user behaviour through cultural probes Outreach programme Workshops and training for suppliers and the library and archive communities Technology watch and advice services Lisbon, 9.2007 13 Conclusion Planets methods, tools, and services will help organisations diagnose and treat problems with their digital objects High levels of automation and scalable components will reduce costs and improve quality Empirical data will enable improved decision making Find out more: http://www.planets-project.eu Consider training: Principles of Digital Preservation: a hands-on approach. Vilnius, Lithuania, 1-5 October 2007 Lisbon, 9.2007 14