REFLECTIONS OF A DIGITAL STEWARD:Recommendations for scholarship and preservation

Millie Gonzalez, Emerging

Technologies and Digital Services

Librarian

PIVOT: NEW ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Responsibilities shifted from reference and electronic resources to managing emerging technology projects, e-resources, authentication, website and digital services (the institutional repository)

• Supervise full-time person for periodicals/e-journals, part-time repository coordinator and part-time student repository coordinator

Challenges

• Faced tremendous learning curve while actively managing digital services and staff

• Required training on digitization, metadata, technical issues and much more (in addition to mastering the repository software)

• In hindsight, should have taken more time for research and training before working on repository

DIGITAL COMMONS AT FRAMINGHAM STATEOver 20,500 downloads

Current file formats: text, images, video

Team: fulltime librarian, hired and trained: part-time coordinator, part-time student coordinator, partnered with Metadata Librarian

Collections: faculty scholarship (articles, presentations, creative work), events (CELTSS, CDI), FSU documents (NEASC), library special collections (historical images, yearbooks, catalogs)

SABBATICAL: MY FOCUS

• Fill in gaps of knowledge through research and training

• Review of Digital Commons at Framingham State University’s institutional repository to identify outstanding issues and plan for the future

• Benchmark FSU repository with more established repositories. Identify best practices

• Review literature on open access, copyright, digital preservation, metadata standards

• Develop recommendations on preservation, staffing, automated submissions

SABBATICAL: REVIEW

Top 10 Downloads: articles, creative work,

reports, yearbook

Visitors from 22 countries: England, South

Africa, Hungary and more

SABBATICAL: BENCHMARKING AND BEST PRACTICES

• Identified Bepress repositories from universities to benchmark such as College of Brockport, Bridgewater State University, Bryant University, Linfield College, Northeast University, University of Massachusetts – Amherst, California Polytechnic State University, Iowa State University

• Reviewed metadata and structure of other repositories

• Looked at staffing of IR departments. Reference librarians, archivists, repository managers, metadata librarians all manage IRs. Some departments are run by a solo librarian and others are staffed by a dedicated team of librarians, paraprofessionals and students

• FSU’s small repository stood up well in comparison. FSU Digital Commons had interesting and varied types of collections. Our staffing department size is adequate to serve our present needs. Our collections’ metadata will improve with the newly hired Metadata Librarian. The repository team works well together. Hired wonderful coordinators who love to learn and are truly interested developing great collections.

SABBATICAL: RESEARCH

• RefWorks bibliography with books, articles and websites I reviewed (still populating!): http://www.refworks.com/refshare2?site=042421170651600000/RWWEB1041135837/sabbatical

• Learned of standards: Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification (TRAC), Open Archival Information System (OAIS) reference model standard for digital archives

• Discovered that my research approach was initially myopic. Instead, I needed to include other factors impacting repositories: data management, digital curation, digital preservation

• Realized that I will never stop learning. Took the pressure off of trying to master everything in 6 months.

CRASH COURSE: DATA MANAGEMENT

• U.S. Federal funding agencies (National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), NASA, National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) added new data management and data sharing requirements to their grant applications.

• Repositories can permanently archive and preserve data management and/or datasets

• IR managers can assist researchers to manage, store, share, use, cite data

• IR managers can assist researchers with metadata and writing data management plans for grant applications

• IR departments can host data literacy programs that teach researchers about the life cycle of data, how to find, use and cite data

• IR departments can assist researchers to determine the most appropriate data repositories for their dataset like Figshare, Dataverse, Data Dryad, ICPSR

• Best practice institution: Purdue University, Purdue University Research Repository

CRASH COURSE: DATA CURATION

• Definition: “the active and ongoing management of data through life cycle of interest and usefulness to scholarship, science and education…[including] activities [that] enable data discovery and retrieval, maintain its quality, add value, and provide for reuse over time, and this new field includes authentication, archiving, management, preservation, and representation”

• Data preservation: existence of a responsible data management party, data backup, funding for data preservation, data migration to new technologies, data reuse, and data preservation plans

• Data sharing: act of sharing data with other researchers, creation of metadata, data reuse by others

CRASH COURSE: DIGITAL PRESERVATION

From the POWRR workshop:

• Definition: “combines policies, strategies and actions to ensure long-term access to content that is born digital or converted to digital form regardless of the challenges of file corruption, media failure and technological change.”

• “Digital preservation is an ongoing process, not a one-time activity, and needs to be addressed programmatically.” Ideally institution-wide.

• “Digital files become inaccessible over time unless they are managed and migrated to new technology as needed.”

CRASH COURSE: DIGITAL PRESERVATION

Digital objects need attention to preservation

Stages of preservation:

• Back-up: data is copied and stored in multiple locations. Special software or hardware can be required to access the content so the long-term accessibility and authenticity of the content cannot be ensured. (FSU repository current supports this stage. Need to include preservation metadata.)

• Byte replication: multiple identical copies are created. Byte replicas will provide content that is authentic and accessible for as long as the file formats remain the usable. There is no provision that file formats are current or discoverable with proper bibliographic information

• Long term preservation: established management policies and activities that will ensure the endurance of content over the very long term. Content must be usable, discoverable, authentic and accessible

OPEN ARCHIVAL INFORMATION SYSTEM REFERENCE MODELAn ISO standard that expresses the roles, functions, and content of an archive

Roles: producer, management, consumer

Functions: services, ingest, archival storage, data information package, archival information collection, archival information package, dissemination information package

FSU repository complies with certain stages but it is not a digital preservation system. This process can be automated.

PRESERVING DIGITAL OBJECTS WITH RESTRICTED RESOURCES (POWRR)

WORKSHOP

Hosted solutions like Preservica or Archivematica/Duracloud can support the OAIS

Reference Model and the 72 TRAC certification requirements.

POWRR workshop provided IR managers tools IR managers for each stage. Not

every repository needs to be TRAC certified. Amazing realization!

LOOKING AHEAD: STRATEGIC PRIORITIES

• Get new team in place

• Lay the foundation for data management and digital preservation curriculum training (summer 2015)

• Identify and plan for a pipeline of projects: special collections, online journals, self deposit, restructure repository to reflect new Dean structure, theses, video, increase faculty scholarship

• Market the repository in a variety of ways: host monthly, targeted training; develop marketing collateral; engage in social media; proactively set up meetings

• Make the case for digital preservation software (Preservica, Archivematica)

• Highlight the suite of services provided by repository: consultation, copyright compliance, hosting data management plans, self deposit

RECOMMENDATIONS

• Emulate the 5 Colleges (Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, UMASS Amherst) approach to digital preservation. Formed taskforce: education, best practices/standardization, experimentation (Archivematica pilot).

• MCCLPHEI libraries who have Bepress repositories can form a similar taskforce. Possibly provide centralized key services.

• The library can formalize structure of the IR team to become a department. This would help with funding and grant applications.

• Morph the IR into a new kind structure (digital services center) in order to expand digital services. Repository services would be one of the services offered by the center

DIGITAL SCHOLARSHIP CENTER: RATIONALE

• Fill a gap in digital services, group existing roles into a new, innovative structure to house and market the services we already provide for students and faculty

• Offer repository and scholarly communication services

• Expand our services, offer expertise. Partner with other campus departments to fill in gaps of expertise (for example, programmer)

• Include support for data management, digital preservation

• Identify grants to fund the new structure’s projects

• Help students graduate with the necessary cutting age skills and relevant training

• Encourage cross-disciplinary use of the resources and as a result, promote campus-wide innovation in research, teaching and learning

• Provide internships for FSU students and Library Science graduate students to support activities in digital humanities research, data management and preservation

BROWN UNIVERSITY’S CENTER FOR DIGITAL SCHOLARSHIP

DIGITAL SCHOLARSHIP CENTER: BEYOND BASIC SERVICES

• Support digital fluency by partnering with Information Technology Department, CELTSS and Academic Departments to create innovative services for students and faculty

• Provide a sandbox space for community to experiment with latest technologies

• Showcase cutting edge technologies and innovation via Makerspaces including 3-D printing, Raspberry Pi, Arduino

• Provide training in media production (podcasting, video) and data visualization for digital humanities projects

• Offer digital forensics services to recover important files currently inaccessible with outdated formats

REFERENCES

• Kirchhoff, Amy, Morrissey, Sheila, Wittenberg, Kate, Networked Information’s Risky Future: The Promises and Challenges of Digital Preservation, Educause Review (March/April 2015)

• Lippincott, Joan, Goldenberg-Hart, Diane, Digital Scholarship Centers: Trends & Good Practice, Coalition for Networked Information http://www.cni.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/CNI-Digitial-Schol.-Centers-report-2014.web_.pdf

• Diekma, A.R., et al., The NSF/NIH Effect: Surveying the Effect of Data Management Requirements on Faculty, Sponsored Programs, and Institutional Repositories, The Journal of Academic Librarianship (2014) http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2014.04.010

• Scaramozzino, Jeanine Mari, Ramirez, Marisa L., McGaughey, Karen, A Study of Faculty Data Curation Behaviors and Attitudes at a Teaching-Centered University, College and Research Libraries, (2012)

• McCullough, Heather, Developing digital scholarship services on a shoestring, College and Research Libraries News (2014)