Barbara Sierman

Recently at the iPRES 2014 conference in Melbourne I gave a presentation on the SCAPE Preservation Policies.  Not only I explained  the SCAPE  Preservation Policy Model , but I also summarized my findings after analysing 40 real life preservation policies. You can read the detailed information in my article (to be published soon). Basically I think that organisations not seldom overstretch themselves in formulating preservation policies that are not in line with their maturity. And I propose to extend the SCAPE Catalogue of Preservation Policy Elements with information indicating in which maturity level  this policy element is relevant.  The 5 levels are based on the Maturity Model of C. Dollar and L. Ashley.

The SCAPE project is finished, and that is why  I can use your input. The current wiki on the Open Preservation Foundation will be open to OPF account holders and  you will be able to help by adding this maturity level to the preservation policies. This way it will reflect a collaborative view, rather than my own opinion. 

Currently the OPF website is undergoing  some changes, but when this is finished, I'll remind you!

Writing preservation policies might be a daunting task, but support is underway!

The SCAPE project has produced  a Catalogue of Preservation Policy elements, which is now available as a wiki. Here you will find an explanation of the SCAPE Policy Framework, consisting of 3 levels of policies. From high level or Guidance Policies to Preservation Procedure Policies to a very detailed level of policies useful for automatic workflows in preservation.

Preservation Procedure Policies, the intermediate level,  is designed to assist you to  create or update  your preservation policies. This level describes the approach an organisation intends to take in order to achieve their high level goals. It is this level that you can find in the Catalogue of Preservation Policy Elements. The catalogue offers a unique overview of policy elements that could be part of your preservation policy.

How does this work?

Each Guidance Policy has a set of related Preservation Procedure Policies. The details of these are described, using a template with a variety of information, for example a definition of the policy, the life cycle phase in which this policy will be relevant, a suggestion of who should be involved in creating the policy etc. For more inspiration you can also have a look at our collection of published preservation policies.

Although the SCAPE project is mainly focused on libraries, data centers and web archives, we believe that this Catalogue is also relevant for other disciplines with a preservation task.

We are convinced that, the Catalogue of Preservation Policy Elements will need to be updated based on new insights in digital preservation, even after the SCAPE project finishes in September. So we would like to invite you to send us your feedback, either by adding this in the Catalogue (each page offers an opportunity to add comments), or to send feedback to Barbara.Sierman@KB.NL.

The final version of the Catalogue of Preservation Policy Elements was created by:  Barbara Sierman (National Library of the Netherlands),   Catherine Jones (Science and Technologies Facilities Council, UK) and Gry Elstrøm (State and University Library, Aarhus, Denmark)

Interested? Join the SCAPE Webinar on Preservation Policies on May 28, 14.00 hrs CET.

One of the activities in the European project SCAPE is to create a catalogue of policy elements. At the last iPRES conference we explained our work and you can read about it  . During our activities we started collecting existing, published policies and we have now put the current set on a wiki http://wiki.opf-labs.org/display/SP/Published+Preservation+Policies Looking at the results of your colleagues might help to create or finalize your own preservation policies. As I said during my presentation at iPRES 2013, there are far more organizations dealing with digital preservation than published preservation policies on the internet – at least based on what we found!

If your organization has a digital preservation policy and you want to see yours in this list as well, please send an email to Barbara.Sierman@kb.nl and it will be added.

During the event in Braga (see Pauls blog)  many nice examples were gi ven of technical solutions that are currently under development in SCAPE, showing that an intelligent combination of existing technical features (sometimes developed in other domains) can be transformed into tools that support digital preservation in the broadest sense. Broad because  not only focused on stuff that is already in the digital archive. But very much on the preparatory phase. Here digital preservation people are faced with new materials that they need to judge on several aspects (what is it, does it contain risks etc.). By carefully analysing the material, they take care that only the best will be ingested in the digital archive. Take for example a tool that helps to discover duplicates, missing images and corrupted images in a large collection of digitized material by making a visual comparison. The reported results will help the organisation to do a quality control and only preserve the best.  The need for these tools was fed by real life stories of digital archives that were faced by receiving digital duplicates from different sources . But it might well be that  this tool could also be used for other issues, for example related to “authenticity”. To let the imagination get to work and to find more situations to apply these tools, we need more stories. User stories that tell about the problems the archives are faced with in the preparatory phase and how they think to solve them. Basic activities. Combining these stories with advanced technologies can contribute to practical digital preservation, based on ” the best of both worlds”.

In the Scape project, policies for digital preservation play an important role. The sub project Planning and Watch is especially interested in integrating institutional policies into automated watch and automated planning. But most of the preservation policies are formulated on a very high and often strategic level. They are too general to be used in automated processes. A literature investigation and studying existing policies led to a three level distinction of preservation policies:

High level policies or guidance policies, defined as “written statement […] that describes the approach to be taken by the repository for the preservation of objects accessioned into the repository” (according to RAC).Example:  “The organisation will ensure that the preserved material is authentic”

Preservation Procedure Policies, working definition “a translation of the high level policies into a strategies describing in which ways the goals and intentions of the high level policies will be achieved”. Example: “Authenticity will be achieved by integrity checking and provenance trails.” “Integrity checking will be performed by taking and comparing checksums”

Control Policies Working definition: “a translation of the preservation procedure policies into actual situations whereby the characteristics of the digital materials, actions and tools [etc.] are incorporated“. Example: after each preservation action a checksum control will be performed according to method X and creating metadata Y about the result.

The aim of this work package is to create a catalogue of policy elements, that will play a role in digital preservation and will be used in the automated watch and planning activities. The scenarios of the Scape project are an interesting area to test the catalogue.

The catalogue should also show how the lower level policies are related to the higher level and as such, will support organizations to create their own set of policies.