Institution Self-Assessments

Illinois State University

Planning for Digital Preservation: A Self-Assessment Tool

Questions written by Liz Bishoff, The Bishoff Group and Erin Rhodes, Consultant This tool is designed to help staff of museums, libraries, archives, and other cultural organizations begin to think about long-term sustainability of their digital collections. It complements the Digital Preservation Readiness Assessment developed by the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC). Although conducting a digital assessment at your own institution can be difficult, the following questions can help the staff of cultural organizations initiate a self-assessment.

The following topics are covered in this tool:

• Mission and goals
• Policies and procedures
• Staffing
• Finances
• Digital content
• Technology
• Access and metadata
• Digital preservation
• Rights management

Mission, Vision, Goals, and Objectives

• Have you incorporated digital resources and access to these resources into your mission and vision statements?

They have at the last strategic planning. Revision;

• Are digital initiatives incorporated into your organization’s strategic plan? Is the preservation of digital resources incorporated into your strategic plan?

Yes, we are undergoing a strategic planning for digital collections. One had been set for Special Collections just a couple of months ago;

• Have you developed specific goals pertaining to the digital initiative? Have you developed specific goals and objectives that relate to digital preservation?

Policies and Procedures

• Have you created policies in the following areas for your digital program? Have you implemented these policies?

• • Collection management/development: Guidelines have been written, editing is a work in progress;

• • Copyright, may be incorporated into Collection Management: Making copyright a crucial point to be observed in the selection process for potential collection;

• • Disaster or Emergency Planning: Under the charge of the preservation department for physical materials;

• • Exhibits: Do occur on main of library;

• • Preservation Plan: Under revision;

• • Public Use: Dissemination via CONTENTdm;

• Does your digital program include best practices or procedures for any of the following OR are you in the process of developing best practices or procedures for the following?

All the above. Guidelines have been written and editing is a work in progress. Copyright is the no. 1 decision factor;

• • Selection
  • Metadata creation
  • Content creation (scanning, digital capture, etc.)
  • Quality control
  • Digital Preservation
  • Licensing
  • Public Use
  • Website Management

• Do you outsource any aspects of the digital initiative? If so, which ones? To whom?

Digital Collections Unit: Have outsourced transcription of audio recordings with transcriptioninstitute.com; Preservation/Archives: Have outsourced with CARLI via archive.org;

Staffing

• Do you have staff specifically assigned to the digital collection initiative? Is staff from other parts of your organization involved in the digital collection initiative? What are the roles of the different individuals?

a. Head of Digital Collections Unit. (1) FT non-tenure track faculty. Project management; b. Digital Collections Librarian. (1) FT tenured faculty. Metadata work; c. Digital Assets Coordinator who heads the Milner Digital Center. (1) FT staff; d. Digital Imaging Specialist. (1) FT staff; e. Students: (2);

• What technology staff is involved in your project? Are they part of your organization, your parent organization, or another organization? What are their responsibilities in the digital initiative?

Support by Systems IT (1) staff and (1) non-tenure track faculty for CONTENTdm customization and Web development processes respectively;

• What staff is involved in digital preservation activities, both within your organization and parent organization? Is technology staff involved in digital preservation? Is preservation staff involved? What roles do they play?

Digital preservation processes are observed throughout. Storage is on assigned shares and campus tape archives, TIVOLI server;

• What training do you provide staff involved in the digital initiative? What staff attends this training?

It depends;

• What training in digital preservation does staff attend?

CARLI events;

• Do you participate in a digital collaborative? What role does the collaborative play, what role do members of the collaborative play?

Finances

• What are the primary sources of funding for your digital initiative?

• • Grants

• • Organization’s budget

• • Fees from products created through digitization

• • Donors

• • Other

• What percentage of funding comes from each source now and what percentage do you see coming from each source in the future?

Strategic planning for digital collections will convene soon;

• What is your current budget for your digital initiative, including staffing? What do you anticipate that budget to be in 5 years?

• What is or what do you anticipate being the primary source of funding for digital preservation? In an ideal scenario,

• • Grants
  • Organization’s budget
  • Fees from products created through digitization
  • Donors
  • Other

• How do you plan to fund your digital preservation activities?

• • Grants
  • Organization’s budget
  • Fees from products created through digitization
  • Donors
  • Other

Digital Content

• Have you undertaken a risk assessment1 of your digital collection? Do you plan to undertake a risk assessment2?

Will be discussed in strategic planning for digital collections;

• What types of materials have you converted to digital format? (e.g., books, documents, sound recordings)

Books, audio recordings, pottery, art works, slides, K7, vinyl, photograph, VHS, miniDVs, negatives, original art, paintings, maps;

• What type of materials are you collecting in digital format? These materials are considered born digital.(e.g. books, documents, sound recordings)

• What digital formats are you currently managing? What do you plan to manage in the future? (e.g. TIFF, JPEG, PDF)

TIFF; JPEG; PDF; WAV; MP3; CR2; SWF;

• Are you outsourcing the creation of digital content, creating content in-house, or both? Do you have a quality control program? Is it both at the vendor and in-house?

Both processes, in-house and outsourcing; Quality control observed in-house. For outsourcing, trial versions are produced prior and policies are questioned;

• How long do you plan to actively manage these resources? Less than ten years, more than eleven years?

Undetermined;

Access and Metadata

• How do you provide access to your digital collections? What systems do you use?

CONTENTdm; Other content is available via archive.org;

• Who may access your collections?

Public; Illinois State students only via VPN for one art collection;

• What percentage of your digital collection is available online?

It depends at which point of development a collection is called digital; Should it be named digital from the time an item is digitally converted, for what is planned to be rendered available, 55-66% approximately;

• What type of metadata are you creating? Descriptive, structural, administrative, all three?

All three;

• What metadata schema(s) are you currently using? What schema(s) do you plan to use in the future?

Dublin Core (simple & qualified);

• What digital asset management system and/or repository system is your organization using or planning to use?

At this point in time, CONTENTdm for digital collections; Bepress for repository of other digital assets;

1 RISK ASSESSMENT / ANALYSIS: A risk assessment is simply a means of structuring the process of analyzing risk. Risk Management of Digital Information. Washington DC, Council on Library and Information Resources (June, 2000). Retrieved November 30, 2007.

2 The risk assessment information can be used to determine what to digitize or to determine what materials will be at risk for your digital preservation strategy.

5 Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification: Criteria and Checklist. Chicago, IL. Center for Research Libraries, March, 2007. http://www.crl.edu/content.asp?l1=l3&l2=58&l3=162&l4=91

Technology

• What technologies are you using to create digital content? Digital camera, Scanner, Digital Audio Workstation? Other? What brand of equipment are you using? How old is the equipment? Who is responsible for maintaining the equipment?

Canon EOS7D Digital SLR Camera; Kaidan Magellan M-2500 3D Copy Stand for Rotational Object Photography; Betterlight Super 8K-HS; Indus Planetary Book Scanner 5003; Epson Expression 10000XL; Epson Perfection 4990 Photo; Epson Stylus Pro 9800 large format printer; RICOH Aficio 2238C;

Support/maintenance: In-house Systems IT personnel & external

• Do you have set replacement cycles on capture workstations? If yes, what time period? Do you have set replacement cycles on servers? If yes, what time period? Do you have set replacement cycles on storage devices (e.g. SAN, NAS, tape library, etc.)? If yes, what time period?

• When do you upgrade software? Is all the software upgraded at the same time?

Mostly related on project and need-based;

Digital Preservation

• Which digital preservation strategies has your institution implemented? Bit preservation? Migration? Refreshing data? Emulation? Maintenance of legacy equipment? Data backup? Locally developed digital preservation solution?

• Have you implemented a digital repository into your program, and, if yes, is it a commercial , open source, or homegrown solution?

Bepress is underway;

• Are you outsourcing your digital preservation activities to another organization? Which activities in particular (repository, storage, etc.) are being outsourced? If yes, to whom? What responsibilities does this organization have?

• What content are you placing in the repository?

Digital collections in CONTENTdm; …not limited to pre- or post-prints of scholarly papers, reviews, and book chapters; white papers; lesson plans; student capstone projects; dissertations and theses; technical reports; syllabi; lesson plans; data and other scholarly works in Bepress (goal in progress);

• Has the repository been through a self-audit using the Center for Research Libraries/OCLC Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification (TRAC)?

• Do you or your vendor have a digital preservation plan? Has your vendor been through an audit or a self-audit based on the CRL/OCLC TRAC?

• If you are locally managing your preservation activities, what media are you using for storage? CD/DVD, removable media (disks, zip disks), online magnetic media (hard drives), tape? What frequency do you refresh your CD/DVD?

Online magnetic media (hard drives), tape

• If you back-up your files, where are they stored? At what frequency do you back-up your files?

Daily on magnetic tapes, TIVOLI server campus

Rights Management

• Has copyright or licensing concerns deterred you from creating and preserving a digital collection? When acquiring digital content do you acquire digital preservation rights (Do you have the right to modify the digital object to preserve it?)

For one collection, legal investigation under progress