The Specimen Case and the Garden: Preserving Complex Digital Objects, Sustaining Digital Projects

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The Specimen Case and
the Garden: Preserving
Complex Digital Objects,
Sustaining Digital Projects
Schlosser, Melanie
schlosser.40@osu.edu
University Libraries, The Ohio State University
Ulman, H. Lewis
ulman.1@osu.edu
Department of English, The Ohio State
University
In a recent article entitled "Innkeeper at
the Roach Motel", Dorothea Salo worries
that focusing exclusively on preservation when
designing institutional repositories leads to
a situation in which documents are placed
into repositories but never come out (Salo
2009). In this conceit, a "live" project gets
placed in a repository and "dies" from lack
of use. However, when attempting to preserve
distributed, dynamic electronic textual editions,
a somewhat different metaphor is needed.
Like items in a specimen case, "live" digital
projects must be "killed" before they are
added to a conventional institutional repository
such as DSpace. In such applications, they
must be removed from the dynamic ecology
of their production environments (the garden
of our title) and frozen in a snapshot form
that is substantially different in appearance
and functionality. In our presentation, we
will outline our own efforts to construct a
preservation and sustainability plan for a multi-
format, distributed, dynamic electronic textual
edition that involves both the creation of a
preservation "specimen" and the careful tending
of the edition in the "garden". We will also share
the general tools and workflows developed by
the project that can help others tackle the same
challenges.
Due to their innovative nature and the
environments in which they are created, Digital
Humanities projects are often dynamic and
distributed. In other words, they often exist
in multiple parts maintained on distributed
hardware (which itself is supported by multiple
organizations), and are often compiled for
viewing on the fly in response to readers'
actions. The typical preservation strategy of
frequent offsite backups is inadequate for these
projects. The user or manager must to be
able to find the backups (including all of the
constituent parts of a complex project, wherever
they reside) and recognize what they are; the
backups must be in usable condition; and their
contents need to be understandable to the
people who want to use them. Moreover, if
backup files are to be used in any way similar
to their original use, the files must be (1)
compatible with current hardware and software,
(2) translated into formats that are compatible
with current hardware and software, or (3) used
on reconstructed or emulated hardware and
software that match the environment in which
the project was originally developed.
Digital Humanities projects created by faculty
often have the added vulnerability of relying
on the creator's university computing accounts.
Absent special accommodations, these accounts
usually expire on a set schedule once the
individual has moved on, taking with them
information that often exists nowhere else.
1. Cultures of Preservation
In short, digital materials require a culture
of description, preservation, and access every
bit as robust as the practices and institutions
that allow us to preserve manuscript and
print materials. The devil of preservation —
whether of print, digital, or other material
artifacts — lies in the details of production, use,
description, storage, conservation, and access.
This holds true whether we are talking about
acidic paper disintegrating on library shelves,
digital files in obsolete formats, or media
spread across computer systems whose links
to one another have been broken. Preservation
is further complicated by the distinction
between preserving physical artifacts (books,
manuscripts, floppy disks, flash drives) and
preserving the information contained on those
media in a useful format.
"The Specimen Case and the Garden: Preserving
Complex Digital Objects, Sustaining Digital
Projects" focuses on the preservation challenges
posed by complex digital humanities projects,
which present unique challenges to libraries

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and repositories charged with accessioning,
describing, and preserving the scholarly record.
Our work, funded by the U. S. National
Endowment for the Humanities, takes a two-
pronged approach to the problem, developing
technologies for preserving digital
objects
—
and the relationships among them — that
constitute complex projects, and establishing
institutional structures for sustaining digital
humanities
projects
after their creators are no
longer actively involved in their development
and maintenance. Over the course of more
than a year, we have interviewed faculty
involved in digital humanities projects, library
professionals, and information technology
professionals; assessed the need for new
practices adapted to digital preservation at our
institution; and documented the resources and
workflows currently available for, or adaptable
to, long-term preservation of digital objects. We
have also begun to develop tools, institutional
structures, and workflows for describing and
archiving complex digital objects, as well
as sustaining distributed digital production
environments.
2. Preservation and Sustainability
Tools and Workflows
Our presentation will outline the problems
associated with preserving and sustaining
complex digital projects, review the data
we collected during our interviews, literature
review, and environment scan, and share the
tools that we have developed, including the
following:
-
a lifecycle map of complex digital projects that
represents development and preservation
milestones as interactions among scholars,
library professionals, and IT professionals;
-
a visual content manifest for complex digital
projects that represents assets, the hardware
on which those assets rely, and entities that
enable the collaborative work of developing
and preserving digital humanities projects;
-
a Metadata Encoding and Transmission
Standard (METS) profile for creating archival
packages of complex digital projects;
-
a visual representation of the roles of
the scholars, library professionals, and IT
professionals on our campus in the long-term
preservation of digital humanities projects;
-
a proposal for a Digital Humanities Network
that could sustain selected distributed digital
projects, without requiring that they sacrifice
functionality for centralization.
Some of these tools and workflows will be easier
to adapt to different projects, institutions, and
cultural settings than others: for example, any
library system should be able to adapt the METS
profile to their needs, while our proposed Digital
Humanities Network will serve mostly as a
heuristic. Indeed, we hope to initiate a fruitful
conversation about how to build cultures of
preservation for complex digital projects among
scholars, librarians, and IT professionals in a
variety of institutional settings.
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