A Repository Year: Planning
and Implementing a Digital
Repository at the Computer
History Museum
Paula Jabloner, CHM
Katherine Kott, Consultant
ALCTS PARS Digital Preservation
Interest Group, January 27, 2013
Topic summary
• Project background
• Creating functional
requirements
• Selecting repository
software
• Selecting storage
infrastructure
• Future plans
“…we will define the
digital repository as the
systems and workflows
that support digital
asset management and
digital preservation.”
Digital Repository Best Practices
for Cultural Heritage Institutions
Computer History
Museum by the numbers
1st permanent exhibit opened in 2011
60+ terabytes of digital objects including our truly unique historic
software collection
15 terabytes anticipated yearly rate of growth
500+ oral histories
3,000 moving images
5,000 linear feet of archival materials
10,000 photos
35,000 artifacts
CHM Ecosystem
• MIMSY collections
management system
for permanent
collection
• HD video production
team needs
• Website for discovery
• ~ 50 FTE
Assumptions based on immediate needs
& time constraints
•Use existing tools and systems
•Open source software
No punch cards!
•No additional resources
•Preservation layer will be built on common commodity
storage hardware that are modular and extensible
•Creation of a digital repository is an on-going
commitment by CHM
The Digital Repository Team
Katherine Kott, Ton Luong, Heather Yager, Paula Jabloner, Al Kossow, Vinh Quach.
Project Charter Year One
Objective
Deliverable
Understand the scope of CHM digital collections √
Inventory of current digital holdings
Stabilize interim storage for digital collections
1/2 New interim storage system installed
Identify and document best practices
Establish policies and procedures for managing
and preserving digital collections
√
√
Consultant’s report
Policy and procedure manual
Ensure staff are familiar with digital collection
management policies and procedures
Training & education program for collections staff
based on policy & procedures manual
Evaluate and select software (digital asset
√
management) system
Evaluate and select digital preservation (storage √
infrastructure) management system
Core Team software recommendation
Core Team preservation system recommendation
Model and test implementation of digital object
management and preservation workflow
√
Prototype system in place to support all phases of
digital object lifecycle
Share project findings with other organizations
√
Present papers, share findings through blog
posts, etc.
Gather Requirements from
Stakeholders
OAIS Framewok: Four activity categories
• Creation and Ingest
• Metadata Management
• Storage and Archival
• Publishing and Information Retrieval
Define functional and nonfunctional requirements
• Functional requirement example:
– Does the system support manual entry of
minimal metadata?
• Non-functional requirement example:
– What are the infrastructure (hardware and
software) requirements?
Software selection
• Evaluation of five open source software
packages against functional requirements
resulted in selection of…
Storage numbers
•Base
72 TB
•Plus
96 TB
Storage Infrastructure
Lessons learned-recommendations
• It is possible to get a prototype system up and
running in one year
• Hardware procurement was trickier than
anticipated
• A similar process/solution could be helpful for:
– Small stand-alone museums and archives
with limited resources
– Cultural heritage organizations within larger
institutions—especially those with diverse
content
Future plans
• Additional funding from google.org will
enable CHM to:
– Complete testing of prototype infrastructure
– Create procedures and workflows
– Ingest 35+ terabytes of diverse content
– Incorporate metadata for digital assets into
discovery layer
Thank you
Paula Jabloner ---pjabloner@computerhistory.org
Katherine Kott ---Katherine.kott@katherinekott.com
Backplane wiring of the CDC 7600 supercomputer, c. 1969
The wiring was done by hand and had to be precise to within a
fraction of an inch to optimize the speed of the machine