Preservation Projects at Basel University

Transcription

1 Preservation Projects at Basel University PD Dr. Lukas Rosenthaler Imaging & Media Lab / Digital Humanities Lab University of Basel STAR nd Workshop on Standards and Technologies in Multimedia Archives and Records (STAR) 18th -19th January

2 long term preservation of digital information - still a problem? obsolescence of technology IT-technology has a life cycle of 2-5 years with limited backwards compability new storage technologies new operating systems new file formats reading a storage media requries matched hardware and software 2 2

3 long term preservation of digital information - still a problem? obsolescence of technology IT-technology has a life cycle of 2-5 years with limited backwards compability Device Type Tape drive - DAT Manufactured by:seagate Model/Part #:STD24000N Recording Standard DDS-1 Enclosure Type Internal Interface Type SCSI I new storage technologies Type DAT " x 1/2H Capacity 2 GB (native) / 4 GB (compressed) Supported Tape Cartridges (Read and Write) DDS-1 Recording Standard DDS-1 new operating systems Data Transfer Rate (native) 550 KBps ( 1.89 GBph ) Data Transfer Rate (compressed) 1.1 MBps ( 3.87 GBph ) Buffer Size 1 MB Connections 1 x storage - Fast SCSI - 50 pin IDC new file formats Compatible Bays 1 x front accessible " x 1/2H OS Required IBM OS/2, UNIX, Microsoft Windows NT 3.51 or later, Novell NetWare 3.11 or later Width 5.7 in reading a storage media requries matched Depth 6.9 Height 1.6 in hardware and software 2 2

4 What are the common options? Do nothing! digital archeology Computermuseum archive media, machines, documentation and service technician (last item poses most problems) Emulation Simulate old computer on modern machine (but how can a ½ Tape be read on a modern computer?) Migration copy, copy, copy,... Permanent medium carve it in stone

5 What are the common options? Do nothing! digital archeology Computermuseum archive media, machines, documentation and service technician (last item poses most problems) Emulation Simulate old computer on modern machine (but how can a ½ Tape be read on a modern computer?) Migration copy, copy, copy,... Permanent medium carve it in stone... 4 Microfilm 4

6 We know what to do! Its no more a technological problem for static digital objects, because the OAIS model provides a good theoretical reference for the organization of the archiving process Migration has been proved as a well working method Digital microfilm (Monolith ) can be used as technologyindependent, stable medium with a longevity of > 500 ys 5 5

7 Migration a pain in the A... Migration of large amounts of data is - painfull and tedious - time consuming - not cheap (!!) - zero tolerance for errors 6 6

8 - distributed - redundant - self-organizing - self-replicating DISTARNET making data migration (almost) painless. It s a archiving system 7 7

9 State of DISTARNET PhD thesis finished now (to be published very soon) prototypical proof of concept is working to do - Implementation of a system for productive use - Integration into Virtual Research System SALSAH - Ivan Subotic, Lukas Rosenthaler, Heiko Schuldt (2012) A Benchmark for RDF-based Metadata Management in Distributed Long-Term Digital Preservation, DESWeb 2012, in Proceedings of ICDE

10 Long-term storage on Microfilm Digital storage which is technology-independent great longevity visual not electronic 9 9

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12 Monolith: Visual encoding.pdf.wav.j2k encode and record on film Any file type can be encoded and recorded as 2D dotcode. Metadata, deocding information etc. and other visual information can be record in a human readable fahsion 11

13 Monolith: Example

14 Monolith: Example Digital recording with 2D dotcode

15 Monolith: Example analogue image Digital recording with 2D dotcode

16 Monolith: Example analogue image Digital recording with 2D dotcode human readeable metadata

17 Monolith: Example analogue image technical metadata Digital recording with 2D dotcode e.g. XML, decoding information format specification, etc. human readeable metadata

18 Decoding.pdf.wav scanning and decoding.j2k

19 Both methods for static objects only! image / sound / movie files static text files mostly retro-digitized objects Problem: which file format to use? Must be - open and well documented - wide spread / common - as simple as possible - e.g. text: PDF/A, image: TIFF, sound, movie: MPEG

20 Dynamic objects? More and more dynamic objects are becoming interesting... and have to be archived! - knowledge bases - research databases - virtual research systems 15 15

21 Challenges of dynamic objects databases can be kept alive for a long time by migration (as long as the base technology is available: e.g. MySQL4.0 MySQL4.2 MySQL5.0 MySQL5.5...) But: scientific referencing / citability requires, that any previous state can be recreated at any future point in time 16 16

22 SALSAH System for Annotation and Linkage in Arts and Humanities - a Virtual Research Environment (VRE) for Humanities - Annotation/tagging, linkage, commenting, transcription and knowledge organization around digital sources (images, texts, movies etc.) 17 17

23 Objectives for a VRE in humanities efficient use of digital sources collaboration computer-aided knowledge organisation knowledge mining (semantic search, network analysis etc.) 18 18

24 Data model of SALSAH Along the lines of the Resource Description Framework (RDF) as proposed by the W3C for the semantic web - knowledge is represented by digital objects that may have a digital representation (e.g. a dig. image of a page, a sound file etc.), but that can also be abstract constructs without a digital representation - each digital object may have many properties (=metadata elements) with values - a property may point to another digital object 19 19

25 RDF-statement (RDF-tripels) Stultifera Navis transcription/stultifera_navis.xml Sebastian Brant 20 20

26 Complex example is a Painting Heilanstalt Waldau author Adolf Wölfli description... Scan Beschreibung... points to Scan#14088 path woelfli/images/highres/14088.tif is a novel Link#47121 points to Robert Walser author Der Räuber has title Der Räuber description description... Anfang 1929 begab sich Walser, der schon seit einiger Zeit von Angstzuständen und Halluzinationen page of Mikrogramm-# 74 geplagt wurde, nach einem geistigen Zusammenbruch... part of Scan#12456 Pfad Beschreibung mikrogramme/images/highres/12456.tif... ROI#14377 position [24,136] [511,384] description

27 Projects using SALSAH: Incunabula Basiliensia (Art History, University Basel, Prof. B. Schellewald) e-codices (University Fribourg / Library of the monestary St. Gallen) Anton Webern complete edition (Inst. for Musicology, University of Basel) Microfilmarchive (Inst. for Musicology, University of Basel) Photoarchive of the Society for ethnic studies, Seminar für. Volkskunde/Europäische. Ethnologie VitroCentre Romont Glass paintings more to come

28 Current work on SALSAH Versioning system for the digital objects and their metadata (citability) something like Apples time machine for the knowledge base Integration of DISTARNET archiving Distributed implementation of RDF Graphical network analysis and navigation Visualization 23 23

29 Digital archiving who? institutional requirements: - sustained long-term funding - digital know-how - content knowledge - enough resources (human resources and budget) difficult problem: - archives and libraries often do not have neither enough knowledge nor human resources - budget: the analog stuff (books/video/film/...) still has to be taken care of and now the digital stuff needs care (and much [!] money) too

30 who? new, specialized institutions are required sustained funding needed government: will be difficult in these times private sponsors: will be difficult in these... any ideas are welcome!!! 25 25

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