Digital Information Archive Study

Sponsors:  UCSB Library, Letters and Science, and the Social Science Survey Center

Context

For at least last two decades, UCSB faculty have been generating and acquiring unique research and teaching materials in digital formats – texts, images, datasets, analytical software tools, and more. These materials are an important part of the total mix of academic resources from which faculty and students benefit. Across campus, practices vary widely as to whether these are stored in any secure, reliable and long-term way, and if so, by whom, where, for how long and with what forms of direct or indirect discovery and access. Selected faculty, librarians and IT staff have expressed interest in building some form of “archive server” for such locally created electronic information, either to ensure digital preservation in the true archival sense, or simply to coordinate storage, “cataloging,” and access mechanisms for better service to and use by the campus community.

What is meant by a campus digital archive? Perhaps a start would be to identify some of the collections and services that such an archive might support. In research as well as instruction, many information objects are acquired. Some have a short life, news-clips; some may be used repeatedly in support of teaching or interdisciplinary projects and research. All have varied and changing distribution formats. Known local examples include an art-slide collection, selections from musical scores, statistics and demographics over time, or a seismic database of California earthquakes and their distribution. Other information objects might include personal publications and research. They are at risk of surviving over the long term. A plan is needed on how we should address these information content concerns over time and how to prepare flexible and scalable technologies supporting future campus information needs.

Issues to Be Explored

• Intellectual property and its management
• Consistent object and metadata treatment
• Tools for browsing and object access
• How to determine the content and protocols for such an archive
• How stored objects might be reused or expanded in new contexts
• How it would be fiscally supported and administered

The campus would seem to be of reasonable size and scope for such a project. If an archive was successfully implemented, links to other content and services would most likely be considered so “good practices” and system architectures should be part of a design.

Proposal

The project sponsors suggest that both a workshop to expose current campus activities and a working group be convened to construct a high-level white paper on how to proceed. The working group should consist of content holders; system developers, and decision makers who would be responsible for doing the initial research and preparing a draft recommendation. It helps that some existing campus projects can be used as models such as the Alexandria Digital Library and ADEPT research initiatives. We should draw on relevant models and projects elsewhere in UC and key research libraries, for example, the CDL eScholarship project, the Berkeley SUNSite, MIT’s Dspace project, the UVA Electronic Text Center, NASA’s Open Archives standards, Gary King’s NSF funded Virtual Data Center Project: An Operational Social Science Digital Data Library, and projects showcased through the Coalition for Networked Information to which UCSB belongs.

How This Project Supports the Academic Mission

Enhance digital scholarly communities, some of which already exist and others of which are under development at UCSB (e.g., CITS, Microcosms, social science data groups, Alexandria, and numerous ORUs with major electronic products).

• Scholars may connect with other research communities.
• Develop personalized libraries.
• Provide peer-to-peer and group collaboration.
• Collocate, preserve, and disseminate unique research resources created at UCSB.
• Avoid “orphan” data or disappearing documents of potential value to other departments or to future users.
• Support UC initiatives in electronic information such as those promoted via the CDL.

Funding Source

The library is willing to host a workshop but would ask that some of the cost be defrayed by campus funds. A small amount of travel might be required for the working group for assessing technologies and successful implementations of like projects. Existing library infrastructures, staff and technology, can be used for developing a test-bed and prototype..

Costs

$7,500 +/- (workshop and travel).

Matching Opportunities

After the initial workshop is held and a specific pilot project designed, additional development and funding could reasonably be pursued with such organizations as the CDL, private foundations, and government agencies such as the NSF.

Staff Support Required

[None].

Existing Resources to Be Used

Library technology and staff, overhead, and existing digital library programs as described above.

Project Timeline

Six months or so.

Life Cycle of Result

Endless.

Pre-proposal group: Larry Carver, Sarah Pritchard, Bob Sugar, Alan Moses, Paolo Gardinali

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