Monday, February 22, 2016

Filling the Digital Preservation Gap

Filling the Digital Preservation Gap. A Jisc Research Data Spring project; Phase Two report. Jenny Mitcham, et al. February 2016. [PDF]
     The report is a collaboration between the universities of Hull and York and during phase 2 of the project they worked closely with Artefactual Systems to enhance Archivematica to enable it to work better as part of a wider system for managing and preserving research data. The report also includes implementation plans for establishing Archivematica at each institution.  (Phase 1 of the project (Filling the Digital Preservation Gap. A Jisc Research Data Spring project. Phase One report July 2015. Jenny Mitcham, et al.) looked at digital preservation as part of a wider infrastructure for research data management.)

Some items of interest from the report:
  • In order to manage research data effectively for the long term we need to consider how we incorporate digital preservation functionality into our Research Data Management workflows.
  • research datasets can be large, of mixed formats and their value may not be fully understood. 
  • Creating access copies may be unnecessary as some datasets will never be requested for reuse.
  • One of the potential bottlenecks in the current Archivematica pipeline is checksum generation
  • populating PRONOM is not a oneoff exercise. We need to find ways to continue to engage and submit samples in order that new file signatures can be created as the need arises.

The report also included a glossary and an appendix discussing "Hydra in Hull Preservation workflows"

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