Born-digital AES and CES publications: Archiving and Preserving the New Stuff Linda Eells & Leslie Delserone [email protected]@umn.edu [email protected] [email protected].

Born-digital Born-digital

AES and CES publications:AES and CES publications:

Archiving and Preserving the Archiving and Preserving the New StuffNew Stuff

Linda Eells & Leslie DelseroneLinda Eells & Leslie [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

The ProblemThe Problem

“…digital information isn’t going to be easy to find…at a stable address in a stable form unless it is held by libraries – and yet, libraries do not hold most of the digital information…

important to scholarship.

It is out there in the wild, on the Web, not collected or preserved.”

-Unsworth and Yu 2003

“The average lifespan of a Web page today is 100 days. This is no way to run a culture.”

-Brewster Kahle, Director and Co-Founder, Internet Archive

Born-digital Extension Publications:Born-digital Extension Publications:

Future?Future?

The Problem: The Problem: LINK ROTLINK ROT

The percentage of inactive Internet references increased from 3.8% at 3 months to 13% at 27 months after publication

Inactive Internet references .com addresses - 46% lost after 27 months .edu (30%) other (20%) .gov (10%) .org (5%)

-Dellavalle et.al. 2003

46% of all citations to Web-located sources could not be accessed HTTP 404 (Page not found) message (61.5%) being the greatest cause of missing citationsCollectively, the missing citations accounted for 22.0% of all citations

-Sellitto 2005

SILOSSILOSCurrent Current contentcontent

More SILOSMore SILOSHistorical Historical (reborn digital) (reborn digital)

contentcontentNational Preservation Program for Agricultural LiteratureA National Endowment for the Humanities supported project of USAIN (United States Agriculture Information Network)

•Preserve and provide access to agricultural literature published prior to 1950

• Twenty-seven states in first five phases• MN – 350 titles, ~3,000 volumes

NAL/Land-grant Universities Microfilming ProjectEarly 1980s - microfilmed older Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station, Agricultural Extension Service, and some academic department publications, including both monographs and serials

Cornell >1,900 books, 6 journals, >850,000 pages

Key ConceptsKey Concepts

• Phased approach

• Scalable

• Compliant with national/international standards

• Persistent long-term access

• Secure

• Openly accessible

• Collaborative content development

• Sustainable deposition/description

Born-digital Extension Born-digital Extension Publications Publications ProjectProject

In partnership and with strong (and critical) support from University [of Minnesota] Cooperative Extension, the Agriculture Experiment Station, and the College of Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resource Sciences-

Collaboratively

establish workflows, create policies, determine appropriate standards, and develop the technical infrastructure for a repository of born (and

eventually reborn) digital agricultural resources

that may be readily scaled to involve other national and international partners (e.g. NAL, eXtension, USAIN, FAO, AgNIC).

Research Proposal Context

Evidence to support a born-digital pilot project at a national level

Research Proposal Question

What are the best practices for conversion of documents that are available in both print and obsolete digital formats?

Research Proposal Approach

• Sample of extension publications, available both in print and digitally

• Conversion from born-digital format or print to archival digital format (pdf)

• File-to-file conversion vs scan+OCR• Description and deposit into the

University Digital Conservancy (UDC)

Reality check

Recession…

“unallotments”…

Short-term, EFY funds

Current Pilot Project

Conversion Sample

Minnesota Extension Service publications• Bulletins• Fact Sheets• Miscellaneous Publications

Total of 245 documents


Methodology

File-to-file conversion

Obsolete or non-archival quality publishing formats (e.g., InDesign, Quark, PageMaker) to pdf


Preliminary Analyses• Evaluate file-to-file conversion based on

time, expense, error rates, and ease of workflow

• Assess time costs versus benefits associated with the application of NAL-T terms to this type of content


Staff• Conversion and proofing work: Library

professional, two students with backgrounds in graphic design

• Description and UDC deposit: Library professional

Results, Current Pilot Project

Fully-converted, proofed, described & uploaded to UDC: 136

Converted files awaiting proofing: 6

Files in process: 30

---

Files with unresolvable issues: 21

Files without print for comparison: 52

Conclusions, Current Pilot Project

• If print is available, file-to-file conversion not the most efficient choice

• Minimal metadata application (NAL-T, abstract) was workable

Conclusions, Current Pilot Project

• If print is available, file-to-file conversion not the most efficient choice

• Minimal metadata application (NAL-T, abstract) was workable

• Preliminary estimate, permanently-lost publications

• Evidence for greater attention to collecting print

Next Steps

• Scan + OCR• HTML capture?• Establish workflow from Extension

Service to University Libraries to UDC• Establish selection criteria in

collaboration with Extension Service staff• Still a silo…

ReferencReferencesesCornell Historical Literature for Agriculture, available at http://chla.library.cornell.edu/c/chla/about.html. (18

April 2008).

Dellavalle, Robert P. et.al., 2003. Going, Going, Gone: Lost Internet References, Science 302 (5646): 787.

Eells L. 2007. Born-Digital Agricultural Resources: Archives and Issues. Quarterly Bulletin of IAALD, 52(3/4).

Gwinn, Nancy, 1993. A National Preservation Program for Agricultural Literature, U.S. Agricultural Information Network.

Heatley R. 2007. Plan to Develop a Digital Information Infrastructure to Manage Land Grant Information. Available at http://www.adec.edu/adec-agnic-digital-inf.pdf (5 February 2008).

Sellitto, Carmine. 2005. The impact of impermanent Web-located citations: A study of 123 scholarly conference publications, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 56(7):695-703.

Unsworth, John and Pauline Yu. 2003, Not-so-Modest Proposals: What do we want our system of scholarly communication to look like in 2010? CIC Summit on Scholarly Communication, Chicago, December 2, 2003. Available at http://www3.isrl.uiuc.edu/~unsworth/CICsummit.htm (18 April 2008).

USAIN Task Force. 2008. Making the Case for a Next-Generation Digital Information System to Ensure America’s Leadership in Agricultural Sciences in the 21st Century. Available at http://www.usain.org/WhitePaperFinal.pdf (1 May 2008).

Weiss, Rick. 2003. Electronic Archivists Are Playing Catch-Up in Trying to Keep Documents From Landing in History's Dustbin, Washington Post, November 24, 2003, A08.