Archival Description Applied to Digital Formats and Digital Preservation:
Maintaining Metadata throughout the Digital Preservation Process
Alexandra A. A. Orchard, Graduate Student and NDSA Student Chapter President, Wayne State University School of Library and Information Science
Abstract
Technology has modified both archival description and the archival materials it
describes. Metadata is now a key component of archival description, making
finding aids and the archival material described more accessible and findable.
Archival material is rapidly becoming composed of electronic records, some born
digital, others digitized for preservation and access reasons. However, a standard
digital preservation method does not yet exist, leaving archivists to choose
between techniques including refreshing, migration, and emulation. Thus,
technology has had a great effect upon archival theory, changing archivy’s current
paradigm as now digital archival materials must be preserved as well as the
metadata (archival description) describing the archival digital object. While
traditional archival theoretical tenets such as original order and provenance must
still be met, new concerns emerge revolving around ensuring the authenticity and
reliability of digitally preserved materials and their metadata, resulting in new
potential theoretical models such as digital curation and digital historiography.
Digital preservation concerns such as a standard digital preservation technique
and retaining the original archival material must be addressed. Metadata issues
including metadata schema, descriptive and amount standards, semantic concerns,
and maintaining metadata as a separate digital object must be resolved. These
challenges as well as potential solutions are presented.
Digital Preservation Challenges
•The core archival concepts of original order and provenance (Boles, 1982)
provide challenges:
•Digital objects do not always have an “obvious” (Gulley, 2011) original order
•Digital objects are more easily modifiable than traditional formats
•Digital objects do not have a corresponding physical object (i.e., a digital
objects physical carrier provides no visual clue as to content, unlike traditional
formats such as paper or film)
•Physical preservation of the storage medium/archival object
•Physical preservation of any equipment needed to view the archival object
•Continuous evolution or migration of equipment that reads/views the archival
object (hardware and software) (Gulley, 2011, p.36). These changes impact the
object’s accessibility and readability, potentially rendering it obsolete.
Digital Preservation Methods
•Defined by Evens and Hauttekeete (2011) “as a set of management processes and
activities that ensures permanent access to digital information, including scientific
and cultural heritages” (p. 158).
•Unlike the preservation of traditional archival materials, it is not yet standardized.
•Several utilized methods of digital preservation:
Emulation
Refreshing
Migration
Authenticity and Reliability
Metadata’s Semantic Challenge
•Authenticity: A record must be “what it purports to be and has not
been tampered with or otherwise corrupted since its creation (i.e.,
the trustworthiness of the record as a record)” (Duranti, 2001, p. 44)
•Reliability: Refers to “the ability of a record to stand for the facts it
is about (i.e., the trustworthiness of the record as to content)”
(p. 44).
Digitization
•There is “a much more abstract concept of what constitutes the
“original form” of a digital object,” thus “we are open to the idea
that a digital object can be “moved” from one carrier to another
without changing or losing any aspect of its original form, even if
this is technically not the case” (Pozo, Long, and Pearson, 2010, p.
292).
•Digital surrogates of traditional /analog objects exacerbate
authenticity and reliability issues because the physical archival item
being preserved is not the original or a true equivalent.
•Not adequately preserving the semantic integrity of digital objects. Dubin,
Futrelle, Plutchak, and Eke (2009) posit that much of this comes from metadata
automation done to accommodate the influx of digital information (p. 597-598):
•Descriptive: Vague, description level is indistinguishable and confusing
•Encoding: Ambiguous syntax (“competing semantic relationships”), information
improperly structured (“unstructured data”), unavailable for machine processing.
•Schema Design: Ambiguities arise when schema’s “basic ontological
assumptions” and specific metadata values are not in sync. compound given the
need for interoperability between metadata schemas and repositories.
•Unlike traditional items, “electronic records are kept authentic by continuous
refreshing and periodic migration” (Duranti, 2001, p. 46).
•Maintaining authenticity and reliability of digital archival material is often
accomplished through technological means, such as metadata.
Metadata as Archival Description
• Metadata is “structured information that describes, explains, locates, or otherwise
makes it easier to retrieve, use or manage an information resource” (NISO Press,
2004, p. 1).
•Enhances traditional formats of archival description, specifically the finding aid,
by providing better findability, searchability, and thus accessibility to users.
•Types of metadata as defined by NISO Press (2004, p. 1):
•Administrative: “Provides information to help manage a resource”
•Structural: “Indicates how compound objects are put together”
•Descriptive: “Describes a resource for purposes such as discovery and
identification”
•Preservation: As defined by the Paradigm Project, 2005-2007a (Groenewald
and Breytenbach, 2011, p. 241), provides metadata within five categories to
ensure the digital object is indeed authentic, reliable, and trustworthy:
•Data and archival information for preservation software applications
•Ongoing preservation and migration including reference: data identifiers
•Provenance: history of the data and its ownership
•Context: “relationship of the content to its environment”
•Fixity Information: documents data authenticity
•Standards enabled by metadata provide as defined by Prom (2003, p. 201):
•“A data structure standard for cataloging archives”
•“A content standard for constructing such catalog records”
•“A data structure for encoding finding aids, including subordinate components”
•Together with cross-walks, these enable interoperability.
Metadata’s Challenges
•“Migration has been the only serious candidate thus far for preservation of large
scale archive” (Granger, 2000, Rothenberg’s Views, para. 8) and results in
modification to the archival material. Thus, digital preservation generates concerns
such as integrity and authenticity of the archival material.
•Disagreement as to whether metadata is archival description.
•Inconsistent metadata description (schema and descriptive data) (Prom, 2003).
•Use of different metadata standards (schema and descriptive data)
•Lack of standards for amount and usage, with “the use of myriad metadata formats
[…] applied in different ways to suit local needs” (Prom, 2003, p. 201).
•Migration to a new standard or format may cause data loss or integrity disparities:
•Metadata is a digital object, separate from the archival material it describes, thus
the metadata’s integrity and content must be preserved like the archival material.
•As a separate entity, the mechanism or software program for a user to view the
metadata (both raw and formatted metadata) must remain viable.
Metadata as Archival Preservation
•Archivy’s theoretical needs must be met:
•Traditional: Provenance and original order
•“Archival principles are transformed through technology” (Sternfeld, 2011, p.
574), the electronic record paradigm shift’s effects on reliability and authenticity.
•The “reassessment of the archivist’s relationship to the formation and preservation
of the documentary past” (Sternfeld, 2011, p. 573), caused by this paradigm shift,
requires expansion and further development of digital preservation theory:
•Digital Curation: “A set of interdisciplinary activities that address the growing
critical need to more effectively create, manage, use, and add value to digital
assets over time” (Kunda and Anderson –Wilk, 2011, p. 895). Components:
•Digital preservation: Retain the digital materials.
•Community involvement: Ensures a preservation plan for “user-generated
digital content” and “facilitate[s] user understanding of and engagement with
the digital resources” to prevent “‘digital mortuaries’ of unused materials” (p.
896).
•Digital Historiography: “the interdisciplinary study of the interaction of digital
technology with historical practice”(Sternfeld, 2011, p. 550). Components:
•Community-driven, interdisciplinary
•Focus on enhanced search interfaces and capabilities as well as metadata
•Continue working with technologies to standardize a digital preservation
technique, (possibly migration or emulation). Determining a standard will:
•Discussion and working through the problems facing digital preservation
•Use of a single standard ensures consistency, accessibility, and interoperability.
References and Acknowledgements
Boles, F. (1982). Disrespecting original order. The American Archivist, 45(1), 26-32.
Dubin, D., Futrelle, J., Plutchak, J., & Eke, J. (2009). Preserving meaning, not just objects:
Semantics and digital preservation. Library Trends, 57(3), 595-610.
Duranti, L. (2001). The impact of digital technology an archival science. Archives & Museum
Informatics, 1(1), 39-55.
Evens, T., & Hauttekeete, L. (2011). Challenges of digital preservation for cultural heritage
institutions. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 43(3), 157-165.
Granger, S. (2010). Emulation as a digital preservation strategy. D-Lib Magazine, 6(10).
Retrieved from http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october00/granger/10granger.html
Groenewald, R., & Breytenbach, A. (2011). The use of metadata and preservation methods
for continuous access to digital data. The Electronic Library, 29(2), 236-248.
Gulley, W. R. (November, 2011). 7710 Intro to Archives [PDF document]. Retrieved from
Blackboard.
Kunda, S., & Anderson-Wilk, M. (2011). Community stories and institutional stewardship: Digital
curation’s dual roles of story creation and resource preservation. Portal: Libraries and the
Academy, 11(4), 895-914.
NISO Press, National Information Standards Organization. (2004). Understanding Metadata.
Bethesda, MD: NISO Press.
Park. J-R., & Tosaka Y. (2010). Metadata creation practices in digital repositories and collections:
Schemata, selection criteria, and interoperability. Information Technology and Libraries, 29(3),
104-116.
Pozo, N. D., Long, A. S., & Pearson, D. (2010). “Land of the lost”: A discussion of what can be
preserved through digital preservation. Library Hi Tech, 28(2), 290-300.
Prom, C. J. (2003). Reengineering archival access through the OAI protocols. Library Hi Tech,
21(2), 199-209.
Sternfeld, J. (2011). Archival theory and digital historiography: Selection, search, and metadata as
archival processes for assessing historical contextualization. The American Archivist, 74(2),
544-575.
Special thanks to Kim Schroeder for her review of and feedback on this presentation.