τεχνοσοφια

I've been using my time at RepoCamp today to get the OAI-ORE plugin for WordPress validating again.  I'm having some trouble using the validator so I say that with some diffidence.  But the latest code which is now checked in to the WordPress plugins svn repo ought to be close, if not fully conformant, to the 0.9 version of the ORE spec.

I'm not sure the plugin is really useful; it's just an Atom feed of all posts and pages in a WP instance.  I can think of some ways to make this more useful, by allowing blog authors to create their own aggregations, pulling in content outside of the particular instance.  I am certain that others can come up with even better uses.  I'm open to suggestions.

Thanks to Jay Datema for prodding me a bit, if indirectly.

About a month ago, I read on my colleague's blog that the Emory University Digital Library published a new book on sustaining digital libraries.  I've finally started reading it and figured I would post a note here.

The articles of this monograph provide resources for digital library stakeholders who seek to better understand how to effectively evolve such efforts from short-term projects to long-term sustainable programs. The monograph includes contributions from leaders in major digital libraries that have made such transitions or which are systematically considering the question of programmatic sustainability, including representatives from the National Digital Infrastructure and Information Preservation Program (NDIIPP) and the National Science Digital Library (NSDL).

I might also note that the book is available for free as a PDF.

So far I've read the introduction by the editors and the abstract from Leslie's paper, and the book looks like a high-quality read from cover to cover, with articles based on actual digital library experience.  It's a pragmatic approach for how to sustain digital library initiatives, looking beyond technical concerns towards the more challenging social and economic ones.  To some extent, we are getting pretty good at preserving bits and relationships between collections of bits — it is yet to be seen how good we will be at preserving the preservation systems themselves.

It's hard to believe but I've been at the new job for six months already, a full half-year come the 29th. Some days it seems like I've been here forever; others like I'm still a rank newb. I haven't written terribly much about what I've been up to (but I assure you I've been busy). Let me rectify that.

The Transfer Problem

Two of the projects I've been working on relate to a fairly general problem that we like to call "transfer," which revolves around, well, transferring files to and fro. Sounds simple. Is simple. That is, until you start thinking about preservation and accounting for a highly heterogeneous network with idiosyncratic nodes, esoteric storage software, and differential firewall rules. And that's where it gets interesting (and problematic). Continue reading…

Matt Zumwalt of MediaShelf, LLC has been hard at work thinking about how to make Fedora RESTful. There is now a proposal on the Fedora wiki based on a PDF he sent to the fedora-commons-developers list.

It's an interesting proposal. I've read over the PDF version quickly but it does bear a closer read.

Whether SOAP or REST is more appropriate for a Fedora API is something I'm not sure about, though I don't mean to imply it's an either/or situation.

At long last, the paper that Ron Jantz and I wrote for the Journal of Archival Organization has been published in a special double issue. It's titled "Digital Archiving and Preservation: Technologies and Processes for a Trusted Repository" and is intended to be a fairly nitty-gritty piece on digital preservation (in the context of trusted repositories) for archivists. The abstract:

This article examines what is implied by the term "trusted" in the phrase "trusted digital repositories." Digital repositories should be able to preserve electronic materials for periods at least comparable to existing preservation methods. Our collective lack of experience with preserving digital objects and consensus about the reliability of our technological infrastructure raises questions about how we should proceed with digital-based preservation practices, an emerging role for academic libraries and archival institutions. This article reviews issues relating to building a trusted digital repository, highlighting some of the issues raised and possible solutions proposed by the authors in their work of implementing and acculturating a digital repository at Rutgers University Libraries.

This special double-issue of JAO will also be released in the manuscript, "Archives and the Digital Library."

Thanks to editors Bill Landis, Robin Chandler, Tom Frusciano, and Caryn Radick for seeing this through. And of course to Ron Jantz for getting me interested in this crazy stuff at a time when I had no direction or interest in my career.