Neil Beagrie, Assistant Director (Preservation and Resources), DNER Office, King’s College London

Introduction: Preservation in the DNER

The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the Higher and Further Education Councils works as a strategic, centrally funded organisation to support national IT infrastructure and services for HE/FE in the UK. It supports the Joint Academic Network (JANET and SuperJANET) and electronic content and services through the Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER). As a key funding body for both the provision and development of digital content for the DNER, JISC has a critical role to play in its long-term preservation and access in collaboration with a number of partners. Since 1995 the JISC has been working through a range of research projects to address the major challenges in preserving long-term access to the digital materials which are central to the work of the HE/FE community. Through this work JISC has established an international profile in this area particularly as the research has often been developed in a service environment which has produced practical outcomes. The work of the AHDS, the Essex Data Archive, the Cedars project, UKOLN, and the JISC advisory services are highly valued within the UK and have received worldwide recognition for their work on digital preservation, creation and access to digital resources.

The views of the UK education community, key partners, and JISC services on what is required now to move beyond research projects to secure long-term access to our intellectual and cultural heritage in digital form have been established through a number of independent channels. As part of its core programme, JCEI worked with the National Preservation Office on a group of early research studies into digital preservation. From the synthesis of this group of studies emerged recommendations for future work. The JISC funded with the British Library a workshop on digital preservation at Warwick in March 1999 that brought together a wide range of stakeholders and representatives to discuss digital preservation and propose an agenda for future action. JCEI also commissioned an interim preservation strategy from the AHDS and Cedars in November 1998. These sources have a number of common themes and suggestions for a future programme:

• to move beyond projects into establishing strategies and services to meet the needs for long-term access and maintenance of digital resources on behalf of the UK HE/FE community
• to promote good practice, awareness, and training in digital preservation
• to encourage communication and collaboration between organisations and sectors

With the creation of the DNER team, JISC has established JISC Digital Preservation Focus as a means of promoting collaboration and developing:

• a long-term strategy for preservation of digital materials of central concern to UK HE/FE;
• coordination and dissemination of best practice and guidance in digital archiving to data creators and collection managers and raising awareness of digital preservation issues;
• new research in key areas of remaining concern;
• the national and international partnerships which are essential to addressing digital preservation issues in the long-term.

The following programme of work has therefore been put together by the JISC Digital Preservation Focus in consultation with the Cedars board and others to provide a co-ordinated and integrated programme of work to address the wider digital preservation agenda of JISC, the HE/FE community, and its partners.

The organisational model put forward for the work of JISC Digital Preservation Focus and the Digital Preservation Coalition is intended to provide synergies between JISC services and projects in this area and between JISC and external partners.

From projects to services: towards a long-term strategy for digital preservation in the DNER and UK

Current Work

The preservation of primary data generated by research in the sciences and social sciences is being addressed through a number of data centres including the Essex Data Archive. The JISC and the AHRB are also funding the Arts Humanities Data Service (AHDS) with a remit to preserve and promote re-use of research data generated in the arts and humanities.

However a current major gap exists in the preservation of digital publications and secondary data which is also a crucial concern and of relevance to the UK HE and FE community. The JISC has already implemented through the NESLI licence the recommendations of the JCEI interim preservation strategy to include clauses for the right to perpetual access and archiving in licensing electronic journals for the DNER. With the further development of the DNER and the increasing trend towards electronic publications, it is a pressing need to develop a national strategy and services to secure practical implementation of the rights to perpetual access in these materials on behalf of the community (it is already clear that publishers themselves are unable to guarantee or cannot be expected to commit to the long-term archiving which will be necessary).

JISC has funded CURL through the Cedars project to address fundamental research issues in this area and Cedars has been particularly active and made a substantial contribution to developing work on preservation in digital libraries. The CURL proposal for the Cedars extension year has elaborated on this in greater detail.

JISC is also funding a small study to examine records management and retention issues for the eLib and JTAP programmes which are drawing to a close. These programmes have raised issues concerning retention and preservation of project outputs in digital form such as project websites and the electronic publications.

This is not an area in which the UK HE/FE community is the sole player and collaboration with other partners particularly the national libraries is essential. The current work within the British Library on voluntary legal deposit of digital materials and the development of a digital library store are key developments. The establishment of a BL/HE taskforce, the BL collaboration and partnership programme, and the proposed digital preservation Coalition provide an opportunity to move collaboration forward. Work is also continuing in an international arena and the JISC currently has formal arrangements and shared interests in digital preservation with CNI and RLG and potentially others in future.

Proposed Future Work

A number of essential building blocks need to be put in place if a long-term strategy for digital preservation in UK HE/FE is to be developed. The Strategy needs to build on previous work and ensure that it can feed into the future programme. The challenge is substantial and a number of players will need to have an active role for it to be complete. JISC should have a central role in building and facilitating the development of an infrastructure for preservation within the UK HE/FE sector and developing external partnerships. In addition to national services for the sector, individual institutions may increasingly need to develop capacity themselves to manage for the long-term intellectual assets they have developed in digital form. Advice and support to individual institutions wishing to develop such capacity, local skills and expertise should therefore be part of a programme. Similarly JISC will need to work with external partners both within the UK and internationally on the strategy and its future implementation. These three elements are therefore represented in the proposed programme for future work in this and related areas.

Scoping the requirement: a risk assessment of the DNER collection

The JCEI interim preservation strategy recommended a study to examine material currently within the DNER collections and establish preservation risks to the collection. The investigation should include both commercial and non-commercial content as well as resources currently available under short-term projects and initiatives. The Warwick II digital preservation workshop also recommended that the scale of the digital preservation challenge needed to be established so that appropriate responses and infrastructure can be developed. This would include the volumes and range of material for which access needs to be maintained, prioritising materials most at risk, and assessing existing expertise and infrastructure.

With the completion of the DNER collection mapping study the raw materials for the risk assessment are in place. Services are also identified and this would allow the assessment to be extended to look at the skills base and training needs, and infrastructure.

A study to undertake this assessment will be an essential precursor to assessing national archiving services for UK HE/FE. Current content proposals will extend the DNER collection into new areas such as moving images, which are poorly represented within the existing collection and preservation services. The proposed study will therefore assess the needs of both the current collection and planned extensions over the next three years.

It is not assumed that JISC would have sole preservation responsibility for the DNER collection. With content from international publishers, increasing globalisation and sharing of resources, there will be a need to coordinate preservation activities with other organisations both nationally and potentially internationally.

Building on the Cedars project and work in JISC services

The Cedars extension year aims to contribute to the development of a distributed national archive through further testing and development of the demonstrator and specifications with local institutions and national services. In addition to the demonstrator, further work on preservation metadata is proposed to allow this key area of research and development to be completed with international partners and contribute to the national programme. In addition AHDS, Cedars, and the JISC Preservation Focus will collaborate to integrate existing best practice guidelines and research into digital preservation and disseminate this to collection managers.

Developing the requirement for archiving services

The risk assessment will help define the requirement and scope of the digital preservation services needed within UK HE/FE. Combined with work from the Cedars extension year and assessment of training needs and infrastructure, many key elements will be in place. Further work defining the requirement, the business case for possible solutions, and examination of emerging initiatives elsewhere will be required in the coming year.

JISC Collaboration and Partnerships

JISC works to serve the HE/FE sector but any strategy must extend beyond sector boundaries. A number of external organisations including the NPO, Resource and the national libraries and archives have a role to play in developing a wider national strategy for digital preservation. JISC will work with these bodies to develop a national strategy which interfaces with the UK HE/FE community.

Promoting good practice, awareness, and training in digital preservation within HE/FE

Current Work

JISC has funded a number of advisory services which have made substantial progress in disseminating good practice and raising awareness amongst data creators and individuals depositing data with JISC services in the DNER. The AHDS and TASI through their guides to good practice, websites and workshops have raised awareness of digital preservation and best practice in digital resource creation with targeted groups of data creators. Cedars has also prepared guidelines for collection managers as part of its initial phase of funding. Externally a number of other organisations have also been active in promoting guidelines for digital preservation most notably the National Library Australia, the DLM Forum, NEDLIB, and the PRO amongst others.

A substantial body of practice (largely undocumented) also exists in services and projects which have been doing digital preservation work. A research study undertaken by the AHDS and JISC Digital Preservation Focus, funded by the former Library and Information Commission (now part of Resource) has begun to bring together and select from existing guidelines and practices to produce a workbook for the preservation management of digital materials. Compilation of the workbook is being undertaken by Maggie Jones of the AHDS Executive and Neil Beagrie of the JISC. The study was completed on 30th of September 2000 and it is currently hoped to publish the workbook early in 2001. In the interim a pre-publication draft is available on the web as a pdf file from:

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/dner/preservation/workbook/.

The BL partnership and collaboration fund is funding a further study between October 2000 and March 2001 which will examine the potential implementation of the workbook in libraries. We have included a number of the Cedars partners (Cambridge and Oxford), the NPO and the British Library in this work.

The majority of existing outreach work has focused on selected groups of data creators. There has been relatively little work to date aimed at improving skills and expertise in digital preservation management amongst collection managers. A recent survey of RLG member institutions needs in digital preservation also pointed to this and highlighted the need for greater training and skills development within member institutions. Work undertaken by the AHDS with the digital preservation workbook and the guidelines being produced by the Cedars project are important first steps this area which could be extended to benefit the management of the DNER's digital collections and those of partners who are contributing content to it.

In addition, within JISC services and projects information on digital preservation is widely scattered and sometimes difficult to locate. This can hinder the promotion of good practice and awareness of the advice which is available for those within HE and FE. Web pages for Digital Preservation Focus to address this are therefore being developed.

Proposed Future Work

Although this work is targeted specifically on the HE/FE sector it is recognised it is potentially relevant to and extendable to other external groups. In the longer term this work could contribute to and utilise the proposed Digital Preservation Coalition (see below) to reach this wider audience and to maintain shared learning and activity in this area. Discussions will continue with potential partners outside the HE/FE sector to develop shared work in this area. In the interim proposals for the HE/FE sector have been developed and are outlined here.

The Cedars board and the LIC advisory group for the preservation workbook share many members in common and have discussed the potential synergies between the workbook and the Cedars guidelines. In combination the workbook and guidelines could be used to support a series of training workshops and materials in the UK.

A partnership has now been formed to take forward the following:

Workshops

Based on the work of both AHDS and Cedars a series of workshops or roadshows will be arranged to take the learning to individual organisations or consortia. The workshops would be run by JISC Digital Preservation Focus, AHDS and Cedars. Over the course of 12 months, the collaboration will produce a series of one day regional workshops within HE/FE and an extended national workshop based on the digital preservation workbook. A potential model for the extended national workshop would be the digitisation workshops/schools held by Cornell and HATII. Detailed proposals for the workshop series are being finalised with Cedars and the AHDS.

Publications

Both Cedars and the LIC project have produced electronic publications, these would be further enhanced over the course of the 12 months and training materials from the workshops made available.

Both projects have produced guidance documents for collection managers, a further year of collaborative work would allow for this learning to be extended and targeted in different forms for different stakeholder groups. At the end of 12 months it is envisaged that a nested series of guides would result.

Case Studies

There is currently a lack of documented practical experience in digital preservation. However, learning by doing is (and will continue to be) an important aspect of digital preservation work in the UK. Drawing on case studies of the Cedars test sites, in depth case studies done by AHDS, and new work to gather material in new areas, this element of work would provide practical case study information over the web for other organisations.

Digital Preservation Focus webpages and mail list

Pages are being developed within the DNER team to provide a focus for digital preservation awareness, pointers to reports and digital preservation activities in JISC services and projects. Future developments could incorporate some of the outputs noted above and also contributions from individuals in other JISC services and projects.

JISC partnerships and collaboration

Proposed Future Work: The Digital Preservation Coalition

Establishment of the Digital Preservation Coalition was a principal recommendation of the Warwick II digital preservation workshop in 1999 and was endorsed in principle by JISC in September 1999 with agreement to fund the JISC Digital Preservation Focus from June 2000. The Coalition was envisaged as developing, through a series of memoranda of understanding and inward investment as appropriate with relevant UK and other agencies, a UK digital preservation agenda within an international context. Concrete action towards the establishment of the Coalition isnow underway and will be reported at the Cedars conference. Although the exact shape and programme for the Coalition will be resol ved in consultation with proposed members, an outline of the Coalition and its work is rehearsed here.

Constitution of the Coalition

It is envisaged the Coalition would be established as a membership organisation by a core funding group of partners. A number of membership levels could be defined to allow for future expansion. Discussions have already taken place between the JISC, BL and the National Preservation Office (NPO) management committee on the relationship between the proposed Coalition and the NPO. A close working relationship already exists between the NPO and JISC Digital Preservation Focus and this will provide a good foundation on which to build.

A range of options exists for the constitution of the Coalition including establishing it as a separate entity or hosting it for legal and administrative purposes within one of the member organisations. These options will need to be explored by the founding group.

Proposed Programme of Work for the Coalition

The JISC has a very broad remit and has/is is funding digitisation in a number of University libraries, archives, museums, and university departments. The digital preservation interests of HE/FE are cross-sectoral and cover issues ranging from electronic records management to electronic journals or multimedia. The JISC would therefore need to work with a range of different sectors and is interested in establishing broad cross-sectoral representation in the Coalition.

Such broad participation was itself seen as essential by participants in the Warwick II workshop. There were a number of reasons for this. First, projects and initiatives are proliferating and the institutions themselves felt there would be significant value in the umbrella organisation to help coordinate or at least keep a watching brief and monitoring role on their behalf. Secondly, despite sectoral differences it was felt most of the technical and some organisational issues remain the same for all organisations. There are therefore significant synergies and efficiencies in collaboration. Finally, it was already possible to identify benefits in cross-fertilisation of ideas and practices between sectors: a good example of this being the draft Open Archival Information System standard developed within the space data community now being tested and adopted in other sectors.This is not to say that the interests of different institutions and sectors will be identical. Each will have a unique profile, peer groups (other national libraries, national archives, etc) and interests. The Coalition must be sufficiently flexible to accommodate this diversity, maximising the potential benefits from this for its members, and minimising potential risk. It must also be sensitive to the presentation of activities and balancing the various 'branding' and corporate interests involved.

To achieve this the Coalition is seen as operating on two levels: a set of core activities of common interest and benefit to all its members, and a series of projects which may address interests and needs the two or more members and be taken forward by them.

Activities is such as defining and disseminating good practice, lobbying and raising the profile of digital preservation, training, technology watch and current awareness are seen as potential core activities of the Coalition. The Preservation Management of Digital Materials Workbook mentioned earlier provides a good example of collaborative effort and benefits and could be seen as a pathfinding activity leading up to the formation of the Coalition. Future development and maintenance of the workbook and programmes associated with it would be good examples of potential core activities for the Coalition.

A number of potential projects have also been identified. An early frontrunner amongst these is a feasibility study and pilot project for archiving the UK web. Concern has already been raised over the retention and potential preservation of web based materials in UK HE/FE. As scholarly communication, government and education move online, the need for further work and research in this area becomes essential. Preservation of online publications and websites for the UK domain is also not covered by voluntary legal deposit and this area is of interest to the British Library and other libraries, and archives. Much of what currently exists in print form and is used for local and community history is moving online and potetially will be lost to future generations. A number of web archiving projects have now been undertaken in other countries most notably the Pandora project in Australia, and expertise exists within the HE community in UK to initiate and sustain a similar project which could develop expertise, guidelines and contribute a key component for a national archiving strategy.

Conclusion

The past ten years has seen a significant range of digital preservation research projects and activities in the UK. Looking forward the challenges now are:

• to begin to move forward from projects to establishing services and embedding digital preservation as a mainstream activity within institutions
• to begin to join up these projects and activities within the UK (and beyond) to provide a coherent strategy and provision for the preservation of and long-term access to a range of digital materials which are becoming central to our intellectual and cultural life
• to achieve economies is down, critical mass, new ways of working, and the profile and funding levels which will carry the required work forward

At some date in the future I hope the establishment of the JISC Digital Preservation Focus and the Digital Preservation Coalition will be seen as key developments in helping to achieve this and as having been key milestones in the development of digital preservation in the UK.