On January 17, Lisa Schmidt delivered a presentation on the MSU Digital Curation Planning Project to the Intellectual Access to Preservation Metadata Interest Group at the American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Meeting in Boston. The presentation, which covered activity on the project to date, met with a great deal of interest and fired lively conversation among the approximately 50 attendees. Click here to view a PDF of the presentation: ALA Midwinter 2010 Presentation
January 20, 2010
December 11, 2009
University Relations Signs on as Pilot Unit for Digital Curation Guidelines
In January 2010, the MSU Digital Curation Planning Team (DCPT) will begin an in-depth analysis of the digital photographs and digital video held by University Relations. It is expected that curation guidelines resulting from this analysis will be applicable to digital assets held by other units on campus.
As the public relations arm of Michigan State, University Relations creates and maintains digital photographic and video records that document the history of the university. The records of historical value properly belong in the custody of the Archives, many other files have no historical value but remain of short-term use to University Relations, and many others have no current value and should be disposed of to free up server space.
The digital photos and video will be inventoried and appraised, permanent archival records identified, retention schedules for temporary files created, and selection guidelines recommended for new records as they are created. Metadata structures and file naming conventions will also be examined, with recommendations for improvements made if necessary. In addition, DCPT will work with Academic Technology Services (ATS) to develop storage, transfer, and access solutions for the files accessioned by the Archives and kept in temporary storage at University Relations.
December 8, 2009
Digital Curation Planning Survey Results
The baseline data questionnaire administered recently by the MSU Digital Curation Planning Project team yielded 90 responses: 23 from academic departments, 31 from administrative services units, 9 from research centers, and 27 from technology services units.
Represented academic departments covered a wide range of fields, from agricultural economics, nursing, and veterinary medicine to math and science education, physics and astronomy, telecommunications, business, athletics, and the arts. Likewise, administrative units ranged from the Controllers Office, Inventory/Capital Asset Management, the Office of Planning and Budget, the Office of the President/Board of Trustees, and the MSU Libraries to Broadcasting Services, University Relations, and Virtual University Design and Technology (vuDAT), among others. The research centers included the Cyclotron, the Julian Samora Research Institute, and MATRIX. In contrast, all of the technology services responses came from 6 units: Academic Technology Services (ATS), Administrative Information Services (AIS), Agriculture and Natural Resources (ANR) Technology Services, Enterprise Business Systems Projects (EBSP); Enterprise Information Stewardship (EIS); and Health Information Technology.
The types of digital content making up the largest proportion of a given unit’s content varied considerably. Digital and scanned photos and images, word processing documents, and research data sets topped several of the academic departments’ lists, while administrative units reported large proportions of paper imaging documents, word processing and spreadsheet documents, and databases. Research data, audio/video, word processing documents, and programming code predominated at the research centers. As might be expected, technology services units noted that most of their digital content consisted of code, databases, and web pages.
File formats comprising the largest proportion of a given unit’s digital content were similarly varied. Among the academic departments surveyed, PDFs, SPSS and SAS statistical formats, TIFFs, JPEGs, MySQL, and Camtasia video formats were all noted. Various database formats, TIFFs, text, MS Office formats, as well as audio and video formats, predominated at the administrative units. The research centers reported sizeable concentrations of video formats, php code, MS Word, and SAS, and the technology services units carry large proportions of text and programming code formats.
In terms of storage, nearly all of the units store digital content on hard drives, and most also use some combination of different types of removable media as well as network storage; one unit even reported storing data on cassette tapes. Seventeen units plan to increase online storage capacity in the near future, most from 1-10 TB, with some planning expansion of up to 50 TB.
Several units have implemented or plan to implement content management system (CMS) and/or digital repository software. CMS solutions noted include Sharepoint, Filemaker, Subversion, Alfresco, Trac, Adobe Version Cue, Mura CMS, Drupal, Portfolio Server 9, Madison Digital Image Database (MDID), IRIS, Cascade CMS, Document Viewer, DotNetNuke, Intrafinity, an internal wiki-based system, as well as other in-house-developed software. Physical Plant uses the Facilities Administration Management Information System (FAMIS). In some cases, the CMS doubled as a unit’s digital repository. Other digital repository solutions in use included KORA, ResourceSpace, the Concurrent Versions System (CVS) and Git version control software, carefully organized web and file servers, and some “homegrown” solutions.
Many of the respondents provided additional comments stating great interest and enthusiasm in the digital curation planning project’s goal of establishing naming conventions and other digital curation standards. One administrative unit noted, “This is a timely survey, because our unit is at a point where we HAVE [sic] to choose which data to delete off our servers, as we are accumulating more than we can afford to store. We need university guidelines and related archival resources.” Another asked for guidelines on how to handle archive-worthy files at the time of creation, rather than storing everything up front and subjecting the unit to an arduous appraisal process later. Interest in guidance on choosing a digital asset management system was also expressed.
September 30, 2009
Baseline Data Questionnaire: An Opportunity to Help Preserve MSU’s Digital Assets
Is your MSU department or unit responsible for large quantities of data that document the activities and scholarship of Michigan State University? Are you concerned about the future of your unit’s unique digital assets?
If you would like to participate in this important initiative that will result in effective preservation and management guidelines for the university’s digital information, please click here to fill out a short questionnaire about your digital environment. It should only take approximately ten minutes to complete. The questionnaire will be available through October 16, 2009.
“Digital Curation”— What is This?
The introduction to the MSU Digital Curation Planning Project included some possibly unfamiliar terms, such as “digital curation.” Besides providing information and updates on the project itself, this website seeks to offer resources that will help to educate the University community about the research and concepts that inform the project. One great resource on the preservation and management of digital assets is the “Digital Preservation Management: Implementing Short-term Strategies for Long-term Problems” tutorial. More educational resources will be posted on the Resources page of the website. (If a good resource you know of isn’t posted there, please contact Lisa Schmidt at lisa.schmidt@matrix.msu.edu or leave it in the comment section.)
And what exactly is “digital curation”? According to the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), digital curation is “the active management and enhancement of trusted digital resources across the life cycle.” In a word, proper curation ensures that digital objects such as computer files are captured, stored, preserved, and made accessible for the long term.
September 28, 2009
Introducing the MSU Digital Curation Planning Project
Like other research universities, Michigan State University has amassed a growing body of digital information. Much time, effort, grant funding, human capital, and research has gone into creating these digital resources—some of which only exist in digital form. All of MSU’s digital assets are at risk of eventually becoming inaccessible due to the ever-changing nature of technology. Through a collaboration of the University Archives, MATRIX, and the MSU Libraries, and with the support of the Office of the Vice Provost of Libraries, Computing and Technology, MSU seeks to develop a digital curation plan and guidelines to ensure trustworthy preservation, management, and stewardship of the university’s digital assets and intellectual property.
Anticipated outcomes of this MSU Digital Curation Planning Project include:
- Determining institutional readiness for digital asset preservation and management through a gap analysis of existing assets, technical infrastructure, and digital repositories at select MSU units.
- Providing units with guidelines on how best to preserve and manage existing digital assets and plan for the future, based on best practices, available resources, and anticipated future resources.
- Creating awareness of technical resources across campus.
What the MSU Digital Curation Planning Project will not do:
- Mandate one-size-fits-all digital preservation policies.
- Create and mandate the use of a one-size-fits-all data repository for the university.
- Address confidential or sensitive data.
The first step in this analysis will be a survey of campus units housing representative samples of major categories of data, including but not limited to: non-confidential administrative data, faculty and student research, theses, and dissertations; research data sets; instructional media resources; university publications; multimedia collections; and more. Again, no confidential data or data with security issues will be covered in the survey.