Moving Forward With Digital Preservation at the Library

of Congress

Laura CampbellAssociate Librarian for Strategic InitiativesLibrary of Congress

To develop a national strategy to collect, preserve and make available significant digital content, especially information that is created in digital form only, for current and future generations.

• A Network of PartnersA Network of Partners

• An Architecture for Preservation An Architecture for Preservation

• A National Collection of Digital ContentA National Collection of Digital Content

Learn by doingLearn by doing

NDIIPP MISSION

WE ARE

OUR MOTTO

Background

Lesson Learned• Focus on natural networks• Need for tools and services to support

partners• Roles and responsibilities will evolve• Scarce resources are a challenge• Stewardship and access a shared

responsibility• Focus domain-specific standards• Public policy incentives are lacking• Critical need for professional development

Engagement Among Communities

• Natural networks Natural networks form over timeform over time

• Partners Partners reengage in new reengage in new projectsprojects

• Experience is Experience is shared across shared across content domainscontent domains

U.S. Partners in the Network

Network Successes• Federal Digitization Guideline WG

– All sectors of gov participating

• Convening communities– Storage Vendors– Preserving Creative America– Digital News– Public Policy on the Web– Geospatial

950Approximate number

of collections targeted for preservation

Content Domain Map

Content Collections

Text & Images Audiovisual Geospatial Web sites

Cooperation on Access

Access challenges• Rights • Distributed collections • Heterogeneous environments• Varied user base

2010 goals• Launch of NDIIPP Portal• Ensure full coverage for all

partner collections• Tools for finding, accessing,

and sharing

Cooperation on Standards

Examples of Standards Work• Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines

Initiative– Still images: develop shared guidelines for maps,

photos and textual content– Audio-visual: establish common practices for sound,

video and motion pictures

• Preserving Creative America– Standardized metadata for stock photos– Recommended workflow for professional

photographers– Preservation practices for film (Academy of Motion

Picture Arts and Sciences)

Cooperation on Architecture

Cooperation on Public PolicyIncentive to Preserve

• Copyright exceptions: Section 108 Study Group Recommendations delivered to the Librarian of Congress and Register of

Copyrights in March 2008http://www.section108.gov/

• Case study: Business Records • Public interest in private records

Sustainable Economic Models• NSF Blue Ribbon Taskforce on Sustainable Digital Preservation and

Access http://brtf.sdsc.edu/biblio/BRTF_Final_Report.pdf

Communications and Outreach• Weekly program updates on www.digitalpreservation.gov

• Monthly newsletter with over 12,000 subscribers

• Digital Preservation Video Series on iTunes U

• “Personal Archiving Day at the Library of Congress,” May 2010

What Comes Next • Focus on content communities, including:

• Public policy on the web• Digital news• Geospatial information

• 10 year content collection plan

• Invest in extension of distributed technical infrastructure

• Advance national digital preservation education program

• Launch a National Digital Stewardship Alliance

NDIIPP Investments, 2010-2020• Strategic Objectives:

– Respond to information challenges through innovation– Catalyze collaboration– Increase national capacity for digital stewardship

• Projects of special interest:– Feasibility of cloud computing for preservation– Sustainability of open source tools– Targeted preservation of news, geospatial data, and

public policy on the web

National Digital Stewardship Alliance• NDIIPP will serve as the executive secretariat

• Membership open to institutions, organizations and networks with a commitment to digital stewardship

• NSDA members to identify, select and steward a distributed national digital collection to be preserved and made available to current and future generations

• Library will convene regular meetings of the alliance

• International collaboration a key aspect

Working Internationally

• We are looking forward to broadening engagement with JISC, others outside US

• We are especially interested in development of tools and services, as well as ideas for education and training

• Also very interested in ways to expand technology tranfser and information exchange

digitalpreservation.gov