Digital Preservation Coalition

DPC Briefing Day: policies for digital repositories

Policies for Digital Repositiories: models and approaches

Venue: British Library, London
Date: 5th July 2006

The DPC held a Briefing day on different implementations of digital repositories. This event was aimed at people who are in the process of planning digital repositories and who want to find out more about available tools and the benefits of each model. The day highlighted different approaches to and aspects of repository models and was useful for those who wish to take a more modular approach to repository building. The day was also useful to people who are starting to move from strategic planning to actual repository implementation.

Sayeed Choudhury emphasised that institutional repositories should provide both an institutional service and long-term custodianship of digital academic output. He also highlighted however how there was a definite lack of discussion on the digital preservation element within repositories; preservation is very hard indeed, and there need to be more case studies. An important theme was that there is no one-size-fits-all solution and institutions should focus on their needs rather than on their systems.
Sayeed Choudhury - Johns Hopkins University: Digital Repository Models (PDF 123KB)

Dave Thompson of Wellcome Trust outlined why they chose Fedora as a system. The outstanding reasons were that it was cheap and versatile. He outlined the implementation of the relationship builder and the metadata extraction tool. As a test bed Dave chose to archive an email spam collection and the methodologies for doing this provide a good case study. The overall message was that a good approach is to manage the information and metadata, not the technology.
Dave Thompson - Wellcome Trust: Fedora at the Wellcome Library, progress and work to date (PDF 150KB)

Paul Bevan continued on the Fedora theme and how they have used it at the National Library of Wales for their digital asset management system. Their interesting project has mapped OAIS elements into the archive. Paul emphasised the importance of cross-organisation buy-in, and the technical challenges of moving digital objects into a managed environment.
Paul Bevan - National Library of Wales: Implementing an Integrated Digital Asset Management System: FEDORA and OAIS in Context (PDF 1.1MB)

Steve Hitchcock outlined the history of institutional repositories and how they have gradually developed out of the open archival initiative. The highlighted the results of a survey of repositories; for example, how only one out of the eighteen surveyed even have a preservation policy for their repository, which is a cause for concern.
Steve Hitchcock - Southampton University: Repository models and policies for preservation (PDF 581KB)

Andrew Wilson's talk outlined the SherpaDP project which investigates a distributed preservation model. This comprehensive work flow is to be the basis of a business model, not a free service; almost an exemplar for outsourced preservation services. The project will also create a handbook. He emphasised that there is a need for 'object mobility' within the model, and how each of the detailed workflow modules map to the OAIS model.
Andrew Wilson - AHDS: SHERPA-DP: Distributed Repositories/Distributed Preservation (PDF 153KB)