Principles of Information Systems Session 05 Recording and Remembering

2 Chapter 4

3 Life without memory is life with no connections to your past, present and future and no ties to the events and people around you Susumu Tonegawa

4 Overview Learning objectives 1.Introduction 2.The act of recording 3.Remembering 4.Other aspects of memory 5.Summary

5 Learning objectives Explain why it is essential for ideas or knowledge to persist through time for individuals and groups Compare the issues involved in written versus non- written records for a culture Choose an appropriate form and medium to record something in Outline the principles of electronic records management List and describe several types of digital and non- digital storage media

6 Learning objectives Describe some strategies to ensure digital data is not lost over time Describe several ways in which stored information can become inaccurate over time List and describe the problems and some strategies for long term digital preservation Explain how memory and ideas can persist through time in a society or an organisation Explain the role of translators, librarians and archivists in ensuring that stored memory can be understood in the future

What did you do today? How will you remember this tomorrow?

8 I tell my friends I keep a diary I have a blog I write to do lists in my PDA I wrote an essay I got a receipt from the ATM I take photos with my mobile phone I wrote a letter I backed up my computer

9 Introduction We have seen how observations, ideas and discovered data may be communicated and represented between humans To ensure this information can be used in the future, or outside its immediate context, it must be recorded in some way So what do you record, and how do you store it? And how do you make sure it will still be there when you come back for it? 1.Introduction 2.The act of recording 3.Remembering 4.Other aspects of memory 5.Summary

10 Introduction Making a record also reduces the burden on human memory you dont have to know everything, just where to find it -What you store and how you store it determines how readily you can find it again

11 Digital information The vast majority of information now produced is in digital format, either: -Born digital (such as emails, text messages, digital photos) -Digitised (such as scanned paper documents, digitised versions of old movies) Lots of this is ephemeral needed only for an immediate purpose But what should be kept, what has ongoing value: -To an individual? -To society as a whole?

12 The act of recording One of the most basic technologies for recording is writing -Any visible form of language, including pictograms and hieroglyphics Writing makes information potentially available to all members of a culture and across time 1.Introduction 2.The act of recording 3.Remembering 4.Other aspects of memory 5.Summary

13 When information is communicated verbally, there must be a continuous, living link often across generations view

Recording information enables it to be removed from its original context and retrieved later, in a different one view

15 Written and non-written languages Written language can be collected, stored, examined, manipulated and analysed in ways (traditionally) impossible for spoken language In earlier societies trained scribes preserved social remembering and culture using languages available to them Chafe & Tannen, 1987

16 Written and non-written languages Knowledge that is explicitly not intended for collection and manipulation may not be written down -Sacred or secret material or practices may be held only by elders or privileged members of the society Some languages may not even have a written form -A purely spoken language, however, is only one generation away from extinction, and depends on a living link

17 Should everything be recorded? Researchers may try to preserve a spoken language and the ideas and cultural heritage embedded in its stories it from extinction There are risks of writing down stories that are traditionally oral: -No control over who may read them -Misinterpretation of meaning -Exploitation of the original culture by outsiders What do you think is it worth it

18 Recording information A recording is never as good as the original -A film of a concert compared with being there -A translation of a poem -The record of your day in your diary compared with living it This means that choosing what to record, and how to record it, is an important decision

19 Recording information Choosing a representation for the record to be stored -Who will use the record, does it have enough information for their purpose, is it in a form they can understand? What storage medium? -Paper or digital document; film or digital image; analogue music or digital audio Which digital format?

20 Which digital format to choose? Whether it has the features you need for the particular purpose -Quality - true colour image, or CD-quality audio -Amount of storage required by the format Portability -How widely supported the format is by application software Whether it is likely to remain available in the future -Official standards are guaranteed to persist, though may not be the best quality for the immediate purpose

21 Formats and standards Some formats are developed by official standards bodies, such as ISO or W3C -JPEG images, PNG images, MPEG video and audio Other formats are proprietary, or owned by a software company -GIF images, TIFF images in scanners Some proprietary formats are so widely used and supported that they are known as de facto standards -PDF documents, MOV, WMA

22 Formats Sometimes the simplest format is the most likely to persist Project Gutenberg, which aims to record all the worlds great books, is storing them as plain ASCII text -This is almost guaranteed to be readable in the future, though does not have many features of more sophisticated formats (such as fancy fonts or page layout)

23 Recorded information is never as good quality as the original experience, so it is important to choose the right medium and format for a digital record Recap

24 Managing electronic documents and records Records management (and information management generally) is likely to be a key skill for informatics professionals -Huge amounts of digital information is being produced as a by- product of normal commercial transactions -Many government, business or medical organisations require information to be kept for legal purposes

25 Managing electronic documents and records involves Storing information Tracking and locate information, finding gaps in a collection, or missing items Answering queries about information Keeping valuable assets secure, accessible only to the authorised Deciding what is worth keeping -trade off between information collection and storage costs, and its value in a future context

26 Managing electronic documents and records Storage Indexing Access Preservation Security Governance Social continuation of knowledge

27 Remembering Things are recorded so that they can be remembered -By an individual -By an organisation -By a government -By a society The record substitutes for an individuals memory or personal experience 1.Introduction 2.The act of recording 3.Remembering 4.Other aspects of memory 5.Summary

28 Storage Storage is a way of ensuring something persists -Any record will last as long as the medium it is stored on (digital or non-digital) lasts A storage strategy involves: -Choice of storage medium -Storage strategy what to back up, and how frequently -Replication multiple copies are usually made

29 Backing up a movie collection over several disks 3 movies, 4 disks

Backing up a movie collection over several disks If this disk is lost we can still recover Movie 1 from the other disks

Backing up a movie collection over several disks If this disk is lost we can still recover Movie 2 from the other disk

Backing up a movie collection over several disks If this disk is lost we can still recover Movie 3 from the other disks

34 Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe LOCKSS is a strategy for making sure a library can continue to maintain its digital collection of article through time Individual libraries in the LOCKSS collective dont have to keep backups of all their collections, because the entire collection is constantly circulating among all members Peer-to-peer checking between documents makes sure there is always a correct copy in circulation

35 Storage media Magnetic media -Hard disks, floppy disks, external drives Optical media -CD-ROM (CD-RW, CD-R) Flash memory -USB sticks, memory sticks Storage Area Networks -Link different types of storage together over a high speed network Online storage -Photos, videos etc stored on remote website

36 Archives are the documents accumulated by a natural process in the course of the conduct of affairs of any kind, public or private, at any date, and preserved thereafter for reference, in their own custody, by the persons responsible of the affairs in question of their successors Sir Hilary Jenkinson written documents maps newspapers photos sound recordings personal collections filmsdances buildings carvings oral records artistic works cave paintings CDs

37 Archiving Archives provide a record of all types of documents relevant to cultural memory -The counterpart to this is memoricide, where museums and cultural archives are deliberately destroyed under ethnic cleansing regimes Archives are physically housed in dedicated institutions -This involves expertise in security, climate control, space usage, etc

38 Digital asset management Increasingly, the documents that are stored as records or archives are digital (either born digital, or digitised) Similar issues apply to categorising, labelling, searching, etc But long term preservation of digital artefacts brings its own issues and challenges

39 Records management is a key skill for informatics professionals. It involves issues of storage, indexing, access, preservation, security, governance, and the social continuation of knowledge. Recap

What software do you currently have on your computer? What are your backups stored on?

What would your answer have been this time last year? What would it have been 5 years ago?

42 Digital documents last forever or five years, whichever is sooner Jeff Rothenberg

43 Preservation and digital preservation Preservation is an aspect of archiving that ensures what is stored survives in good condition Digital preservation is doing this for digital or digitised artefacts Digital preservation: A process by which digital data is preserved in digital form in order to ensure the usability, durability and intellectual integrity of the information contained therein

44 Digital preservation The definition emphasises the preservation of the information contained in the digital artefact, rather than the artefact itself This means that the strategies for preserving digital objects are different from those traditionally used to preserve physical objects A book may decay, but the words in it are preserved in digital form

45 Digital longevity Howard Besser identified 5 classic problems: The viewing problem -We cannot see what is on a disk or file without the relevant software The scrambling problem -Many files are encrypted or compressed, and the schemes for de- crypting may become lost

46 Digital longevity The translation problem -Changing the form of a digital artefact may change its meaning The inter-relation problem -Many digital artefacts such as websites have many component parts where is the boundary of the object? The custodial problem -Who is responsible for preserving digital information?

47 Digital longevity The problem of authenticity is also significant especially for born digital artefacts -How do we know that a digital artefact has not been modified (intentionally or otherwise) since it was created? -This is a growing problem in legal informatics, where digital documents may be required as evidence

48 Strategies for digital preservation ? Replication -Simply copying the artefact on to different media, or more up to date media -Avoids the problem of media rot but not format obsolescence Migration -Moving to a different format and/or updating the media on which the artefact is stored -Standard archival formats are used to counter obsolescence

49 Strategies for digital preservation Emulation -Preserving the original look and feel of the artefact through emulating the hardware and software platform of the original in software -Old arcade games Encapsulation -Storing the artefact together with metadata and other information required to run it

50 Version control As soon as a digital document is revised and saved elsewhere you have two versions so need some form of version control This involves -A consistent naming convention to identify different copies -Controlling who has access to the various copies, and how they can modify them

51 Preserving the Internet There is a huge amount of digital content on the Internet which is added to constantly and which disappears again almost as fast But nobody owns the Internet, so nobody is directly responsible for preserving its resources Some efforts exist though: -Internet Archive -International Internet Preservation Consortium -National libraries, such as PANDORA archive at National Library of Australia

52 Internet Archive www.archive.orgwww.archive.org Captures and stores old web pages -Wayback Machine allows viewing of old pages Collaborates with institutions such as Library of Congress and Smithsonian to preserve cultural material Also houses many digital collections of audio, text and moving images, such as Live Music Archive The Archives aims are to make its collections available to everyone

53 Preserving your own stuff How do you keep your own digital stuff? -CD, Disk drives Many websites retain copies of your photos, videos or writings indefinitely -Flickr -Youtube -Internet Archive

54 Data archiving standards and metadata To be able to access stored data, it must be stored in a way that enables it to be retrieved Metadata is information describing a resource (such as photo or text) which helps indicate the categories it can fit into Using a standard scheme can help ensure resources can be catalogued and searched as part of a wider resource

55 Some cataloguing schemes Dublin Core Element Set -A core set of metadata elements used mostly for describing web pages LCSH Library of Congress Subject Headings -A set of keywords used to describe subject AACR, AACR2 Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules -Cataloguing rules and keywords for libraries RDA Resource Description and Access -Revised AACR2 for digital content

56 Finding stuff on the Web Web resources are identified by address or URL -But problem is that URLs can disappear or their contents change Addressing schemes for persistent identifiers: -PURL (Persistent URL) -DOI (Digital Object Identifier) -ARK (Archival Resources Key)

57 Semantic Web The idea of the Semantic Web is that instead of humans needing to process the meaning of web pages, the computer will be able to All documents on the web would be marked up according to standards for data description and association -Resource Description Framework -Dublin Core Metadata Element Set -URL -XML

58 Long term preservation of digital records is a significant issue. There are various strategies for digital preservation, and international collaboration and standards will be important. Recap

59 Persistence The preservation of records and digital artefacts is at one remove from our experience -If the context of author and reader are aligned, the record may be understood as intended But nothing can be exactly the same What changes, and what persists? 1.Introduction 2.The act of recording 3.Remembering 4.Other aspects of memory 5.Summary

60 Persistence Ensuring that something persists is a common concern for everyday life -Objects or entities -Ability to do things -Social concepts What allows us to do this is memory Matching memory against the present is what is interpreted in your mind as continuity and familiarity

61 Types of human memory - declarative Semantic memory for facts -Paris is the capital of France Episodic memory for events you have personally experienced -Last year I went on holiday to Paris Semantic and episodic memory together contribute to declarative knowledge Enables you to make statements about things that you know and which have happened

62 Types of human memory procedural Procedural memory for how to do things -How to pack a suitcase -How to brush your teeth -How to ride a bicycle

63 Describe how you fold your arms Is your left arm over your right, or your right arm over your left? You remember the procedural knowledge (you know how to do it) but cant necessarily describe how to do it (declarative knowledge) step

64 Types of memory in informatics Informatics uses concepts of both declarative and procedural knowledge in designing artificial memories -Reasoning with facts and rules Jim bought nappies and beer Jack bought nappies and beer all men who buy nappies also buy beer -Stored procedures for calculation =SUM (A5:A10)

65 Social memory Social memories transcend individuals and are built into way a society identifies and conducts itself -National holidays -Traditional stories, songs and art -Telling jokes about the neighbouring region These traditions can persist even if individuals die or written records are lost

66 Organisational memory Records of data and general procedures are maintained for an organisation There is also often a legal requirement to store records for some period of time

67 Decay and obsolescence Physical media may degrade -Data stored on them may be lost Later versions of applications supersede earlier Information may become obsolete -Although the information itself is still there, meaning can be lost -A living system of meaning is required if knowledge is to last Remembering and doing may be essential to preserve meaning not just the written record

68 Social memory and culture Entropy is the tendency of everything towards a state of disorder, negative entropy or order acts against this Human knowledge generally consists in stabilising some order of things that are agreed as meaningful over some length of time An order that outlasts the lifetime of an individual, that enters social memory and tradition, is the stuff of cultural heritage and the social identity of a people -Preserving such order is the function of institutions such as libraries, museums and galleries -Theatre, colleges, art, religions explore and reinterpret themes of social value

69 Which ideas will endure? At any time in a culture, there are themes that are ephemeral and others that turn out to be enduring Words that change their meaning over time are especially treacherous in preserving understanding -Gay, wicked, bad As language changes, information expressed in language is unreliable if you dont take into account the times in which it was written

70 Which ideas will endure? The work of translators, editors, librarians and archivists is crucial in ensuring ideas and concepts persist over time -Must be able to distinguish concepts from the words that convey them

71 Persistence of memory is what gives us our concept of reality. The persistence of ideas and knowledge through time is essential for the continuity of social and cultural identity. Recap

72 Summary Written records allow data to be removed from its original context and used in others Records management is a significant issue for informatics Recorded information is never as good quality as the original experience, so the choice of medium and format is important Formats and applications can become obsolete, and storage media can decay Active strategies are needed to preserve digital information in the long term

73 Summary Information can become inaccurate through going out of date The persistence of ideas and knowledge through groups and society is essential for the continuity of social and cultural identity Language changes through time, so being able to distinguish concepts from the words that convey them is essential

Documents

Principles of Information Systems Session 05 Recording and Remembering