SCORM 2004 Primer v1 McGill Digital Solutions Gord Mackenzie
Digital Curation @ McGill Jenn Riley Associate Dean, Digital Initiatives McGill University Library.
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Transcript of Digital Curation @ McGill Jenn Riley Associate Dean, Digital Initiatives McGill University Library.
Primarily digitized versions of analogue rare/unique/archival/valuable materials
Close collaborations with Rare Books & Special Collections, and McGill University Archives
Currently working on collection prioritization and scaling up production
Digitized content
Institutional mandate
Determined by records retention schedule
Involves transfer of selected records from originating departments after the end of their immediate life
Archival appraisal practices determine what to keep
Born digital university records of long term value
Fonds of personal papers and organizational records
The same types of documents we’ve already collected in paper form
Examples of paper archival fonds from the past: Montréal Natural History Society James McGill MS 435 George Mercer Dawson (President of Royal Society of Canada) Harvey Cushing Fonds (William Osler biographer)
Born digital archival materials
E.g., digital art and digital humanities projects
Often more like software than a set of standalone files
High risk of loss compared to analogue ancestors
Born digital creative content
Typically we only have remote access, are not responsible directly for curation
In some cases we must deliver ourselves rather than rely on the vendor
And in these cases, we take on curation responsibility
Some licensed/purchased digital content
McGill students required to deposit masters and doctoral theses, sign a non-exclusive license to disseminate
Policy allows students to request a 1-year embargo
Students retain copyright
McGill does not contract with ProQuest for ETD delivery and preservation
McGill participates in Theses Canada
Some courses show interest in pushing student work to eScholarship@McGill
ETDs and other student work
Supporting “green OA” In fulfillment of funder mandates Or voluntarily
Still not heavily used, at McGill or elsewhere
No serious discussion yet at McGill about a campus mandate
Expecting Canadian Tri-Council OA mandate beginning May 1, 2015
Pre-prints/post-prints
BIG new focus
Studies show significant loss of data sets over time Odds of data supporting a paper being extant fall by 17% per year (Vines et al
2014; doi:10.1016/j.cub.2013.11.014)
Some studies show a citation advantage for papers with open data
30% for papers published in 2004 and 2005 (Piwowar and Vision, 2013; doi:10.7717/peerj.175)
Expecting Canadian Tri-Council data management planning requirements in 2015/2016
Research data
As difficult as any other step
Luckily, it’s not an all or nothing proposition
Some areas we’re pretty good at (ETDs, digitized collections)
Others we try but with limited success (pre-prints/post-prints)
Others are brand new to us (research data, born digital archival materials, born digital creative content)
This is difficult!
Determine what’s worth keeping
Create/map metadata
Responsibility to handle personally identifiable information carefully
Processing and organizing
Digitization master files to NCS for storage
Backups of files/servers (digital collections, eScholarship@McGill, born digital university records)
Multiple copies including one off site eScholarship is a “repository” but not a “preservation repository”
Reliance on external vendors (licensed content) E.g., through LOCKSS We run a LOCKSS node at McGill
And the stuff we’re not handling so well (born digital special collections/archival materials)
Several different approaches in place now
Need better repositories
That handle common use cases Hierarchical file structures Paged objects Display common file types in-browser
That are connected to preservation systems and manage content in them
How do we make this better?
Harder than the paper world!
What is “the long term”? How long will Universities exist in their current form? How long will computers continue to function the way they do now? How will metadata structures evolve over this period of time?
What does a “pay once” model for digital preservation look like?
What criteria do we use to determine the useful lifespan of a digital file?
It’s about policy as much as technology
How do our organizations set things up to ensure someone takes an active management role over time
Yeah, this is hard
Standardize input file formats to the degree possible
Actively check file integrity
Refresh hardware frequently
Know what will need to be emulated, and what you can safely migrate
Partner!
Strategies
Chronopolis @ UC San Diego
CLOCKSS
Portico
Héritage (Canadiana from CRKN)
Scholars’ Portal
HathiTrust
APTrust
DPN
Who’s doing this well?
And they all need funding to run
And our organizations pay the membership fees from our institutional budgets
How do we get them all to work together?
Committee on Coherence at Scale for Higher Education
That’s a lot of groups!
How many repositories and how they connect
Open source vs locally hosted vended vs cloud
Metadata issues
Keeping up with technological advancements
Technical
How many copies
What preservation actions are necessary
Who to partner with
In Canada or beyond?
Business planning
Policy
These presentation slides: http://www.jennriley.com/presentations/mcgillsis/15winter/curation.ppt
Thank you!