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In Perpetuity: A Nation’s Well-Spring of Knowledge
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| Steve Knight |
The challenge of guarding against digital memory loss is international. Increasingly nations write and publish in electronic format only, a form which is no less precious, and no less fragile, than its print counterpart. The National Library of New Zealand has begun a project to ensure the nation’s knowledge is accessible for future generations in perpetuity.
Steve Knight, Manager Innovation Centre, Digital Innovation Services, National Library of New Zealand, Wellington, New Zealand
Ninety-three percent of information produced each year is stored in digital form while print production continues to increase at approximately 36% per annum.* At the National Library of New Zealand the need for a trusted digital repository arose from both this exponential increase in the amount of digital production and from our legislative mandate to collect digital materials via legal deposit. The sheer volume of digital material threatens to overwhelm libraries and we face significant changes to the way we approach the digital realm. Challenges range from ensuring staff have appropriate technical skills with digital material, to the development of a technology infrastructure capable of ensuring the integrity of digital material “in perpetuity.” Other concerns include providing storage space and supporting systems for large volumes of digital information and the need for geographic redundancy in the event of a catastrophic disaster. At the same time we are confronted with changes in our user communities, many of whom are now “digital natives.” Libraries must develop new methods of access to collections, including digitization and alternative dissemination mechanisms, e.g. cell phones.
The National Digital Heritage Archive
In May 2004, the National Library of New Zealand was allocated NZ$24 million [US$16 million] by the government to fund a program to establish a trusted digital repository to protect the nation’s digital documentary heritage for future generations. The National Digital Heritage Archive (NDHA) will collect, preserve and make accessible digital objects both online and offline, including websites, published works, images and material contained on CDs and floppy disks.
The NDHA has a stringent governance process around it, including regular reporting to New Zealand’s State Services Commission and Treasury, external project management and two separate sets of external advisers providing independent quality assurance directly to the Chief Executive. On top of this, the project has Archives New Zealand representation, a cross-government advisory group and an international peer review group, constituted to ensure the interests of as many sectors as possible involved in issues of digital preservation are taken into account through the library’s development activity.
In early 2005, the library undertook a Request for Information process which resulted in Endeavor Information Systems Inc. and IBM being selected to go forwards to a closed Request for Proposal. The RFP process is currently underway and will deliver a single vendor to work with the library on the NDHA project.
NDHA is based on the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) model and includes the usual range of functional and non-functional components:
- Ingest — quality assurance, object verification, format identification, metadata generation.
- Archival storage — persistent identifiers, storage structures, file directory, resolution layer, backup and restore, file naming, security.
- Administration — authenticity and integrity, security, system KPIs (key performance indicators), business continuity.
- Data management — metadata (preservation, discovery, rights, structural), database management.
- Preservation planning — digital preservation strategies, digital preservation capability.
The Challenges of Digital Preservation
To ensure continued integrity, authenticity, usability and access to a digital object’s informational content and essential attributes, digital preservation activities must focus on three essential components of digital objects:
- Physical object — a binary language inscribed on some physical medium.
- Logical object — the binary data as interpreted by specific application software.
- Conceptual object — what humans (as opposed to computers) recognize as a meaningful piece of information.
Objects must be stored on reliable and secure storage media, and uniquely and persistently named. Processes must be in place to continually verify data integrity. We must be able to accurately identify and document the hardware and software environment in which the object operates and identify appropriate preservation strategies over the lifetime of the object. The end goal is the ability to continue to render and access an accurate and authentic representation of the conceptual object.
Materials facing libraries these days vary in complexity from single format files, such as a TIFF image file, to objects comprised of thousands of interlinked files requiring different software applications for rendering. An example of the latter is the old Television New Zealand website nzoom — more than 80,000 files, ranging from HTML to real-time video and java script. This variety and differing degree of complexity demand a range of preservation strategies.
Digital preservation at the Library of New Zealand will not be a once only activity. Our mandate and legal obligation is to preserve our heritage collections “in perpetuity,” i.e. a really long time. The systems we put in place to manage and preserve digital material now must be capable of evolving over time without threatening the integrity of the digital objects. The program must deliver a robust, generic solution, through a system which is capable of sustaining continuous evolution, which aligns with international best practice and standards, and which is both adoptable by other organizations locally and internationally and flexible enough to accommodate new formats and preservation strategies as they arise. To achieve this, a range of activities, emerging standards and best practice initiatives are informing development of the NDHA including:
- Web archiving tools — IIPC, Nordic Web Archive and PANDORA.
- Preservation metadata — NLNZ and PREMIS.
- Structural metadata — METS/MPEG 21.
- Persistent identifiers — Handle/DOI.
- Rights management — INDECS.
- File format identification, metadata extraction — NLNZ and JHOVE.
- Digital preservation R&D — CAMiLEON, Digitale Duurzaamheid, NDIIPP, Xena and Variable Media Network.
It’s not a simple undertaking but what’s very clear is that if we don’t establish digital heritage archives now, more and more of our national heritage will disappear. Equally clear is that it is New Zealand’s responsibility to provide for the protection of its own digital cultural heritage. By taking responsibility for providing appropriate solutions for the preservation of our digital cultural heritage, the National Library of New Zealand is adding to the global endeavor to preserve national cultural heritage and make it available for future generations to explore and enjoy.
*Lyman, P., & Varian, H. (2000). How much information? University of California, Berkeley. 
www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info/. Accessed September 20, 2005.
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