When the mummy is digital : preservation and dissemination

Most educational institutions include nowadays a digital repository as part of their development and positioning strategy. The main goals of a digital repository are preservation and dissemination, which are some how contradictory, especially if the repository follows an open approach, as it is designed, built and managed from an institutional perspective, although it is intended to be used by teachers and learners. This fact may lead to a low level of usage, as final users are not able to integrate the learning object repository into their learning process. In this paper we will discuss how to promote open educational resources by connecting open repositories with open social networks, bridging the gap between resources and final users (teachers and learners).

Comprehensive digital preservation repositories: gaps, and what do we mean by ���repository��� anyway?

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Ingest into the Digital Preservation Network: Standard Pipelines

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Digital Preservation Tools, Practices, and Policies in Islandora

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Analyses of the usefulness of Software Defined Storage Solutions for Web-based Digital Preservation Applications

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Digital Preservation - Challenges

Long Term Digital Preservation (LTDP) is a secure and trustworthy mechanism to ingest, process, store, manage, protect, find, access, and interpret digital information such that the same information can be used at some arbitrary point in the future in spite of obsolescence of everything: hardware, software, processes, format, people, etc

New laws for author's rights: adequate for digital preservation?

Introduction. Besides technical and economic-organisational problems, digital preservation also faces legal issues, especially regarding copyright legislation, since all digital preservation strategies involve copying materials and/or using software which is typically copyrighted. The purpose of this paper is to ascertain the extent to which current copyright laws meet the preservation requirements of library materials..Methodology. A cross-sectional analysis of recently updated national copyright laws as well as the impact of the other two protection methods: contractual and technological.Results. Even after the latest updates current copyright legislation is almost useless for digital preservation activities since the opportunities provided by WIPO Copyright Treaty to adapt and extend copyright exceptions and limitations have been used to the full.Conclusion. We need a legislation reform that will make it possible to carry out all required copying and communication activities and software use, even if circumventing technological protection is needed. But that is not enough for licensed works. The best solution for this kind of work is to include specific clauses in the licences that facilitate preservation activities. Thus, cooperation between both parties, libraries and rights' holders, is essential.

Digital Preservation and Access to Cultural and Scientific Heritage: Presentation of the KT-DigiCult-BG Project

The fast development and wide application of digital methods, combined with broadened access to the Internet and falling computing costs, have created intense interest in electronic presentation and access to cultural and scientific heritage resources. Information technologies have offered cultural institutions new opportunities for the presentation of their holdings, which are now made accessible not only to the specialists, but also to the citizens and interested parties worldwide. The paper presents an overview of the Bulgarian experience in the field of digital preservation and access and on-going work on the project ���Knowledge Transfer for the Digitisation of Scientific and Cultural Heritage to Bulgaria��� (MTKD-CT-2004-509754) supported by the Marie Curie programme of the FP6 of the EC.

Digital Preservation and Web Access to the Konkoly Observatory Schmidt Telescope Plate Archive

ACM Computing Classification System (1998): J.2.

3D Laser Scanning for Digital Preservation and Dissemination of Cultural Heritage Main scanned objects - Four Temples of Different Religions in Sofia

The project demonstrates the use of modern technologies for preservation and presentation of the cultural and historical heritage. The idea is a database of cultural and historical heritage sites to be created applying three dimensional laser scanning technology and a combination of geodetic and photogrammetric methods and shooting techniques. For the purposes of carrying out this project, we have focused on some heritage sites in the central part of Sofia. We decided to include these particular buildings because of the fact that there is hardly another city in the world where within a radius of 400 m are located four temples of different religions - Jewish, Muslim, Orthodox and Catholic. In the recent years, preservation of cultural heritage has been increasingly linked to objectives of sustainable development. Today, it has become clear that cultural heritage is also an economic resource that should be used for further economic development (through compulsory preservation of its authentic cultural values). There has been a more active public debate on the role of cultural heritage, regarding the following topics: improving the quality of life through development of cultural tourism, leading to an increase of the employment rate, constantly improving the business climate, etc. Cultural heritage preservation is becoming one of the priority objectives of the urban development policy. The focus has been shifted to new ways of preservation, mainly combinations of sophisticated technological solutions and their application for the purposes of preservation and dissemination of the cultural heritage.

Shout and Act: an Algorithm for Digital Objects Preservation Inspired from Rescue Robots

We adapt the Shout and Act algorithm to Digital Objects Preservation where agents explore file systems looking for digital objects to be preserved (victims). When they find something they ���shout��� so that agent mates can hear it. The louder the shout, the urgent or most important the finding is. Louder shouts can also refer to closeness. We perform several experiments to show that this system works very scalably, showing that heterogeneous teams of agents outperform homogeneous ones over a wide range of tasks complexity. The target at-risk documents are MS Office documents (including an RTF file) with Excel content or in Excel format. Thus, an interesting conclusion from the experiments is that fewer heterogeneous (varying skills) agents can equal the performance of many homogeneous (combined super-skilled) agents, implying significant performance increases with lower overall cost growth. Our results impact the design of Digital Objects Preservation teams: a properly designed combination of heterogeneous teams is cheaper and more scalable when confronted with uncertain maps of digital objects that need to be preserved. A cost pyramid is proposed for engineers to use for modeling the most effective agent combinations

Costs and Benefits of a Shared Digital Long-Term Preservation System

Paper presented at the 40th Annual Conference of LIBER (Ligue des Biblioth��ques Europ��ennes de Recherche - Association of European Research Libraries) on July 1st, 2011; with the slides used at the presentation.

Open Preservation: Community Approaches to Ensuring Long-Term Access to Digital Collections

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Digital libraries for the preservation of research methods and associated artifacts

New digital artifacts are emerging in data-intensive science. For example, scientific workflows are executable descriptions of scientific procedures that define the sequence of computational steps in an automated data analysis, supporting reproducible research and the sharing and replication of best-practice and know-how through reuse. Workflows are specified at design time and interpreted through their execution in a variety of situations, environments, and domains. Hence it is essential to preserve both their static and dynamic aspects, along with the research context in which they are used. To achieve this, we propose the use of multidimensional digital objects (Research Objects) that aggregate the resources used and/or produced in scientific investigations, including workflow models, provenance of their executions, and links to the relevant associated resources, along with the provision of technological support for their preservation and efficient retrieval and reuse. In this direction, we specified a software architecture for the design and implementation of a Research Object preservation system, and realized this architecture with a set of services and clients, drawing together practices in digital libraries, preservation systems, workflow management, social networking and Semantic Web technologies. In this paper, we describe the backbone system of this realization, a digital library system built on top of dLibra.

Preserva����o digital nas m��dias e grandes empresas portuguesas: estudo de caso e recomenda����o de boas pr��ticas

Este estudo tem como objetivo analisar o estado atual da preserva����o digital no tecido empresarial portugu��s, particularmente nas empresas de m��dia e grande dimens��o. Para tal, exp��s-se o referencial te��rico da preserva����o digital, necess��rio para uma melhor compreens��o desta tem��tica, nomeadamente atrav��s da apresenta����o de defini����es de diversos autores, de estrat��gias e boas pr��ticas, e de algumas das iniciativas internacionais mais relevantes. De seguida apresentou-se a import��ncia que a informa����o tem para uma organiza����o, sobretudo aquela informa����o criada no ��mbito laboral. Realizou-se, tamb��m, uma caracteriza����o dos v��rios tipos de empresas, de acordo com diretivas europeias, e efetuou-se uma breve an��lise das empresas portuguesas. Para atingir esse objetivo elaborou-se um inqu��rito, por question��rio, fazendo- se uso de uma plataforma de question��rios online. Este foi remetido a 1.358 m��dias e grandes empresas que atuam em Portugal, com o objetivo de compreender ��� entre outros ��� a import��ncia dada, pelas empresas, ao material existente em formato digital, quais as tecnologias respons��veis pelo seu armazenamento e quais os cuidados realizados para assegurar o seu acesso por longos per��odos de tempo. Ao analisar os resultados, e pese embora a baixa taxa de resposta ao question��rio, foi poss��vel concluir que quase todas as empresas participantes j�� procuram substituir os documentos em papel por documentos em formato digital e que se preocupam em manter o acesso prolongado �� informa����o. N��o obstante, dois ter��os dos participantes conhecem o conceito de preserva����o digital e apenas 44% afirmam aplicar estrat��gias desse tipo na sua empresa. Apesar de cerca de 70% dos participantes reconhecerem a import��ncia do uso de formatos abertos para a preserva����o digital, na realidade ainda se verifica uma utiliza����o massiva de formatos propriet��rios ao n��vel dos documentos de texto e das folhas de c��lculo. Para al��m deste contributo anal��tico sobre o estado da preserva����o digital no tecido empresarial portugu��s, prepararam-se alguns documentos que visam auxiliar a elabora����o de um plano de preserva����o digital e, consequentemente, permitir a sustentabilidade a longo prazo da informa����o digital.