Increasingly, intellectual content is 'born digital', as a consequence of which the digital library and digital archival communities find themselves faced with unique preservation challenges, challenges that call for comprehensive digital preservation lifecycle management processes. These processes, in turn, need to be unobtrusive, with minimal impact on content production and dissemination. In order to make it as easy as possible for content creators to preserve their content for the long-term, preservation processes should be integrated into the content production lifecycle. This project will demonstratef a software technology that will comprise such a preservation environment for a video collection that includes other related multi-media content such as audio, transcripts, annotations, related and introductory Web pages, and descriptive, technical, and rights metadata currently being captured in a FileMakerProTM database. The proposal is to take an existing video production workflow that is currently being used for producing and Web-casting video content in a small-scale studio setting, and to integrate it with a digital preservation life-cycle management process that will enable the digital content to be archived for long-term preservation. The collection, 'Conversations with History', is produced at the University of California, Berkeley, edited by University of California, San Diego TV (UCSD-TV), and broadcast and Web-cast through UCTV.
The major research and development challenge to address the development and automation of preservation processes that comprehend the accession, description, organization, and preservation of the video collection and associated content. The automation of these processes requires the integration of workflow systems that are used in active production with preservation systems, and the tracking of the execution of the preservation processes for completion and error recovery. The system will demonstrate an effective preservation methodology by 1) ensuring that preservation 'of last resort' is available for at-risk multi-media collections of critical lasting importance; 2) ensuring that preservation is available for collections that will expand and evolve over time, while managing evolution in the underlying software technologies; and 3) demonstrating a standard reference model for digital preservation lifecycle management that can be integrated into active production workflows.
INTELLECTUAL MERIT: A report from the April 2002 workshop sponsored by the NSF and the Library of Congress states 'Solutions are urgently needed to prevent further loss of valuable digital information - these problems are urgent - action is needed now, not some time in the future'. The proposed demonstration of digital preservation lifecycle management addresses this critical problem by showing that current software systems provide the required functionality, can be implemented at scale, and can preserve at-risk collections. The demonstration will show an ingestion model and collection management for multi-media material, in which preserved intellectual capital is easily accessible, and research results, educational material, and new knowledge can be incorporated smoothly over the long term. The system integrates digital library, data grid, and persistent archive technologies, with the goal of providing a fundamental building block for long-term collection management and preservation.
BROADER IMPACT: The NSF Cyberinfrastructure program, the Library of Congress National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Electronic Records Archive all are actively concerned with the preservation of data. The demonstration of the ability to extract material from a production environment and import the material into a scalable preservation environment is essential for making preservation viable. The demonstration of publication, preservation, federation, and analysis will serve as a proof of preservation concepts to a broad community including humanists, social scientists, scientists, engineers, students, and the general public. The extension of the demonstration project into a production facility will enable other public and at-risk digital content to be preserved. The preservation architecture will support federation of existing digital libraries and preservation environments, enabling the expansion of the facility to all communities. It will provide a replicable model that will demonstrate a system that can contribute to a scalable prototype for a truly national preservation backbone.
