@Risk North 2: Digital Collections Summit

The MC for the day will be Jonathan Bengtson, University Librarian at University of Victoria & Chair of CARL Advancing Research Committee’s Digital Preservation Working Group.

Simultaneous interpretation will be available for all presentations throughout the day.

8:30 – 9:00 a.m.
Coffee and light breakfast

9:00 – 9:15 a.m.
Welcoming remarks

• Maureen Clapperton, Directrice générale de la Bibliothèque nationale, BAnQ

9:15 – 10:15 a.m.
Keynote – The New Challenges of Stewardship in the Digital Age

• Clifford Lynch, Director, Coalition of Networked Information

10:15 – 10:45 a.m.
Networking/health break – coffee and refreshments

10:45 – 11:45 a.m.
Presentation – Results of the CARL Digital Preservation Working Group’s Survey on Current State and Future Needs in Digital Preservation in Canada

• Grant Hurley, Digital Preservation Librarian, Scholars Portal (see slides; Phase 1 and Phase 2 interim reports)

Followed by table discussion then panel response:

• Lisa Goddard, Associate University Librarian, Digital Scholarship & Strategy, University of Victoria
• Geoff Harder, Associate University Librarian, University of Alberta
• Mireille Laforce, directrice du dépôt légal et de la conservation des collections patrimoniales, BAnQ

11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m.
Panel – “At Scale” Digital Preservation in Canada – Working at the Institutional vs. Regional vs. National Level – introduced and moderated by Carole Urbain, Steering Committee member, National Heritage Digitization Strategy and Vice-présidente, Association pour l’avancement des sciences et des techniques de documentation (ASTED) – (see slides describing NHDS)

• John Richan, Digital Archivist, Records Management & Archives, Concordia University (see slides)
• Steve Marks, Digital Preservation Librarian, University of Toronto Libraries
• Corey Davis, Digital Preservation Coordinator, Council of Prairie and Pacific University Libraries coppul.ca/digitalpreservation (see slides)
• Kate Davis, Co-Director, Scholars Portal
• Pascale Montmartin, Analyste d’affaires en préservation et diffusion des collections numériques, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (see slides)
• Faye Lemay, Digital Preservation Manager, Library & Archives Canada (see slides)

12:45 – 1:30 p.m.
Lunch (provided)

1:30 – 3:00 p.m.
Lightning presentations – ‘A Sampling of Current Canadian Initiatives in Digital Preservation’  (Moderator Corey Davis)

• Sarah Dupont (University of British Columbia) – Pragmatic Audio Preservation with Aboriginal Peoples – indigitization.ca (see slides)
• Lisa Goddard (University of Victoria) – Endings: Building Sustainable Digital Humanities Projects (see slides)
• Karin MacLeod (Library & Archives Canada) – Digital Preservation Starts with Acquiring Digital Content (see slides)
• Annie Murray (University of Calgary) – Rock Music: A Digital Preservation Gateway Drug (see slides)
• Mireille Nappert (Canadian Centre for Architecture) – Preserving Software for Long-term Access to CAD Files (see slides)
• Umar Qasim (University of Alberta & Portage Preservation Expert Group) – Portage’s Federated Approach to Preserve Canadian Research Data (see slides)
• Tim Walsh (Concordia University) – Bulk Reviewer: A software application for managing sensitive information in digital archives (see slides)
• Jess Whyte (University of Toronto) – FloppyCapture.py – automating forensic disk imaging for accuracy, efficiency, and data reuse (see slides)

3:00 – 3:15 p.m.
Networking/health break – coffee and refreshments

3:15 – 4:00 p.m.
Table discussion & plenary reporting (Moderator Jonathan Bengtson)

4:00 – 4:30 p.m.
Wrap-up and closing remarks: Clifford Lynch & Jonathan Bengtson

Jonathan Bengtson is the University Librarian of the University of Victoria, Canada; Vice-President of CARL; and Chair of the Digital Preservation Working Group of CARL’s Advancing Research Committee. He is also the Editor-in-Chief and founder of KULA: knowledge creation, dissemination, and preservation studies.

A graduate of the school of library and information sciences (EBSI) at the University of Montreal, Maureen Clapperton was responsible for the documentation centre and document management with the provincial police force, the Sûreté du Québec, from 1989 to 2000. From 2000 to 2001, she was coordinator of strategic monitoring with the Ministère de la Sécurité publique. From 2001 to 2005, she was director of acquisitions for the heritage collection, and since 2016 she has been director general of the provincial library and archives, the Bibliothèque nationale at Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ). From May 2005 to 2016, she was director of the Bibliothèque Myriam et  J.-Robert Ouimet at HEC Montreal. Maureen is on the board of the BTLF, which serves the publishing industry; she is a member of the subcommittee of library directors of the BCI (Bureau de coopération interuniversitaire), which she chaired in 2010-2011, and treasurer and a board member of the AIFBD (Association Internationale Francophone des bibliothécaires et Documentalistes).

Corey Davis is the Digital Preservation Coordinator for the Council of Prairie and Pacific University Libraries (COPPUL), where he develops services, infrastructure, and organizational capacity to support long-term preservation. He has been active in academic libraries for 15 years, most recently as Systems Librarian at the University of Victoria, where he oversaw web archiving and digital preservation. He is active in several national preservation efforts in Canada, including as a founding member of the Portage Preservation Expert Group, the Canadian Association of Research Libraries’ Digital Preservation Working Group, and the Canadian Web Archiving Coalition.

Kate Davis is Co-Director of Scholars Portal, a shared digital library project of the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) based at the University of Toronto.  She is responsible for digital collections and digital preservation services offered by Scholars Portal to OCUL member libraries. Kate has a track record of successful IT project management, including implementation of the Scholars Portal Books platform, and has wide experience in managing IT project budgets and recruiting and supervising IT staff.

Sarah Dupont, Métis, is the Aboriginal Engagement Librarian at the University of British Columbia, where she coordinates the Indigitization program, among her other duties. Additionally, she serves as the UBC iSchool First Nations Curriculum Coordinator and co-instructor of the Indigenous Information Practices course. She is the convenor of the First Nations Interest Group of the BC Library Association and Chair of the Indigenous Knowledge Standing Committee for the Council of Pacific and Prairie University Libraries.

Jean-François Gauvin (MBSI) is director of architecture and design at the BAnQ. His main area of expertise is information systems for libraries and archives, and major digital issues. His more recent involvement has been with the institution’s digital conservation strategies, and a major digital dissemination project funded by the Plan Culturel numérique du Québec. He lectured for more than five years at the University of Montreal.

Lisa Goddard is the Associate University Librarian for Digital Scholarship and Strategy at University of Victoria Libraries. She is currently responsible for shaping UVic’s digital preservation strategy, and for developing infrastructure that can address faculty needs for curation support. Lisa believes that digital preservation is the most pressing challenge facing our profession, and that solutions will require sustained, large scale collaboration. Her other research interests include linked data, open access publishing, and digital humanities. http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4970-053X.

Geoff Harder is Associate University Librarian at the University of Alberta where he feels lucky to work with some great colleagues helping to keep the bits alive. His involvement with regional, national and international DP initiatives includes service as a Board Director for CLOCKSS, membership on CRKN’s national journal TDR working group, membership on the NHDS Steering Committee, and facilitating U of A partnerships with organizations such as Hathitrust, Internet Archive, and several LOCKSS-based networks. He is a member of CARL’s Digital Preservation Working Group, Portage’s Advisory Committee, and a co-chair of the Open Repositories Working Group. Two kids, two kittens, and a two-librarian household complete his profile.

Grant Hurley is the Digital Preservation Librarian at Scholars Portal, the information technology service provider for Ontario Council of University Libraries. He oversees the maintenance of the Scholars Portal Trustworthy Digital Repository and the development of digital preservation services, infrastructure, and learning opportunities for OCUL members. Grant currently serves as lead of the survey subgroup for the CARL Digital Preservation Working Group and on committees for the Archives Association of Ontario and the Association of Canadian Archivists.

Mireille Laforce is Director of Legal Deposit and Preservation of Heritage Collections at the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ). She has been with BAnQ since 2004 and previously worked in the Quebec law library sector. In addition to a Master of Library and Information Science, she holds university degrees in history, archives and law.

As Manager of the Digital Preservation section for about five years, Faye Lemay leads the development of a comprehensive digital preservation program at Library and Archives Canada. Faye was instrumental in development and deployment of the Strategy for a Digital Preservation Program at LAC in 2017. She oversees the long-term preservation of the LAC Digital Archive: the repository of digital heritage at LAC’s Preservation Centre.

Clifford Lynch has led the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) since 1997. CNI, jointly sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries and EDUCAUSE, includes about 200 member organizations concerned with the intelligent uses of information technology and networked information to enhance scholarship and intellectual life. CNI’s wide-ranging agenda includes work in digital preservation, data intensive scholarship, teaching, learning and technology, and infrastructure and standards development. Prior to joining CNI, Lynch spent 18 years at the University of California Office of the President, the last 10 as Director of Library Automation. Lynch, who holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, is an adjunct professor at Berkeley’s School of Information. He is both a past president and recipient of the Award of Merit of the American Society for Information Science, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the National Information Standards Organization. He served as co-chair of the National Academies Board on Research Data and Information from 2011-2016; he is active on numerous advisory boards and visiting committees. His work has been recognized by the American Library Association’s Lippincott Award, the EDUCAUSE Leadership Award in Public Policy and Practice, and the American Society for Engineering Education’s Homer Bernhardt Award.

Karin MacLeod is currently the Manager, Published Acquisitions, at Library and Archives Canada.  Karin has held this position since joining LAC in 2015 and is primarily responsible with overseeing and raising awareness of the Legal Deposit Program, acquisition of digital theses and a variety of outreach activities with Canadian publishers and music producers. Karin holds a masters degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Western Ontario.

Steve Marks is the digital preservation librarian at the University of Toronto. His day-to-day job is to ensure that the library has the planning and technical infrastructure in place to safely preserve the university’s digital stuff – including licensed resources, archival and special collections, data, and whatever else we decide we want to keep. His main research interests are design of information systems, preservation planning and policy, futzing around with obsolete media types, and the preservation of video games.

Pascale Montmartin is a business analyst at the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ). Holder of a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science, she coordinated the implementation of BAnQ’s digital collections management system from 2006 to 2013. Since 2014, she has been a key contributor to the development of a portal for public distribution of BAnQ collections: numerique.banq.qc.ca. She is simultaneously participating in the implementation of policies and procedures as well as the development of a sustainable digital document management platform.

Annie Murray is Associate University Librarian for Archives and Special Collections at the University of Calgary, where she oversees The Canadian Architectural Archives, Special Collections, and the University of Calgary Archives. She is a longtime co-applicant in the Spokenweb project to develop web-based interfaces for the exploration of digitized literary audio recordings. She is currently overseeing the preservation of the EMI Music Canada Archive, with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Mireille Nappert has a master’s in information sciences, and is an archivist assigned to the processing of digital archives acquired following the “Archaeology of the Digital” exhibitions (2013-2015) at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Her previous assignments have mainly involved document management, particularly in digital formats, for the Charbonneau Commission inquiry intro construction contracts (Commission d’enquête sur l’octroi et la gestion des contrats publics dans l’industrie de la construction) and for Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.

Dr. Umar Qasim holds a PhD in Information Systems. He has over 20 years of experience in the field of information technology. Since 2012 he has been working as the Digital Preservation Officer at the University of Alberta Libraries with responsibility for its digital preservation program. He is also involved in many collaborative initiatives and shares his expertise with the professional community of practice at large. He is the current chair of Portage’s Preservation Expert Group.

John Richan is a Digital Archivist at the Records Management and Archives department at Concordia University and MLIS graduate from the McGill University School of Information Studies (‘14). Current professional projects include building digital preservation workflows and leveraging open-source tools from digital object transfer through to Archival Information Package (AIP) creation.

Carole Urbain is currently Senior Director, Academic Affairs at McGill University Library. Her career has been marked by numerous projects at the National Library of Quebec, the University of Montreal, and then the McGill University. As a member of the National Heritage Digitization Strategy Steering Committee for two years, she has collaborated on a study to develop best practices for infrastructure to ensure the preservation of digitized material.

Tim Walsh is the Digital Preservation Librarian at Concordia University Library. Prior to joining Concordia, Tim was a Summer Fellow at the Harvard Library Innovation Lab as well as the Canadian Centre for Architecture’s first Digital Archivist. He is the developer of several digital preservation utilities including Brunnhilde, a reporting and characterization tool for digital archives, and METSFlask, a web application for human-friendly exploration of Archivematica METS files.

Jess Whyte is the Digital Asset Librarian at the University of Toronto, where she previously held the position of Digital Preservation Intake Coordinator and obtained her MI. Jess co-authored Building OpenSocial Apps, one of the first books on developing for social networks, and is a member of the Software Preservation Network’s Legal Working Group, OCUL’s Digital Curation Community, and the EaaSI (or Emulation-as-a-Service Infrastructure) Advisory Committee.

Please note that all the @Risk North 2 : Digital Collections presentations were recorded, and are available for viewing at CARL’s YouTube page:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK59-sdDLfQgUUoAuiOVQeQ

Start times for each session are listed in the notes below the video.

Keynote:

Clifford Lynch, PhD (Director, Coalition of Networked Information)
The New Challenges of Stewardship in the Digital Age
This talk will look broadly at the profound challenges of managing and preserving not only the scholarly record (which is in a very real sense the easiest part of the problem) but also the much broader, more diverse, and more dynamic cultural record that will serve as essential evidence to support scholarship both today and into the future.

Morning Presentation:

Morning Panel:

“At Scale” Digital Preservation in Canada – Working at the Institutional vs. Regional vs. National Level
This session will surface the advantages, challenges, and opportunities that a variety of organizations/institutions have experienced in working “at-scale” on issues of digital preservation. John Richan will speak to Concordia University Archives and Records Management Department’s relatively nascent digital preservation program while Steve Marks will describe the University of Toronto Libraries’ well-established digital preservation efforts, and efforts to rethink their approach. Corey Davis (COPPUL) and Kate Davis (Scholars Portal) will present about their regional consortial efforts, while Jean-François Gauvin (BAnQ) and Faye Lemay (LAC) will describe challenges and opportunities at the national scale. The panel will engage in a discussion in which cases activities are best situated at the national (or even international) and regional level vs. more local approaches.

Lightning Talks:

Sarah Dupont (Aboriginal Engagement Librarian, University of British Columbia Library)
Pragmatic Audio Preservation with Aboriginal Peoples (indigitization.ca)
During the twentieth century, academics conducting research on Aboriginal peoples generated audio recordings of important cultural traditions, customs, practices, and other information. Given the cultural importance of these data, individuals in Aboriginal nations, communities, and organizations stored the analogue audio recordings that were returned to them or found. Many have recently become aware of the fragility of the physical format and the urgent need to preserve them digitally. Post-digitization efforts with these recordings, such as language translation, content analysis, and further research is often required and undertaken for these pieces to contribute to their broader cultural revitalization efforts.

Indigitization is a grant program coordinated through the University of British Columbia Library with the objective of building capacity in cultural heritage media management. It identifies equipment and procedures to achieve preservation standards for the digitization of audio cassettes. Because there is limited funding for this work, achieving the highest standards is difficult in most situations. Challenges that are unique to Aboriginal settings regarding the preserving of digital files will be discussed, along with key strategies to overcome limitations.

Lisa Goddard (Associate University Librarian, Digital Scholarship and Strategy, University of Victoria Libraries)
Endings: Building Sustainable Digital Humanities Projects (project website)
Successful models for bringing Digital Humanities projects to closure are rare, and models for truly sustainable preservation are nonexistent. The Endings Project is a SSHRC-funded collaboration between faculty members, librarians, and programmers at the University of Victoria. We aim to develop practical strategies for concluding and preserving scholarly digital projects, and for maintaining long-term usability across a range of disciplines and DH methodologies. The Endings Project team has interviewed more than twenty-five project leads to better understand the factors that put even major, well-known DH projects at risk of oblivion. With a focus on five in-depth case studies, the project is developing tools and documentation to transform finished projects into static websites that can easily be archived in ways that preserve access, and are scalable for university libraries and other preservation partners. In this lightning talk, co-investigator, Lisa Goddard, will give an overview of our findings to date, and will highlight key opportunities for library intervention and partnership.

Karin MacLeod (Manager, Published Acquisitions, Library and Archives Canada)
Digital Preservation Starts with Acquiring Digital Content
Digital collections present information sharing opportunities and preservation challenges, both of which begin with actually having the precious digital content.  This speaks to the need for library acquisition teams to evolve collecting practices to ensure digital content is acquired and assembled into robust collections.

This lightning talk will focus on 3 recent digital acquisition initiatives the Published Heritage Branch at LAC has embarked on with the goal of enhancing its acquisition of digital content.

While Legal Deposit regulations were expanded in 2007 to include digital publications, limitations in LAC’s technical infrastructure prevented us from systematically acquiring this content.  Until now…with testing of a new Digital Asset Management System underway and an exciting suite of new ingest tools on the horizon we are preparing for change.  Some recent activities this talk will elaborate on are:

• Digital News Ingest Pilot – a modest initiative in which LAC worked with 3 newspaper publishers to explore digital news formats, content coverage and ingest options. Insights regarding selection criteria, content volume and staff capacity were gleaned and results are informing development of a new Newspaper Strategy.
• E-Theses – failure of legacy harvesting tools has prompted LAC to examine its collection of e-theses, explore new acquisition processes and address known preservation challenges.
• Targeted outreach with creators of digital content – creators of digital music and e-books have suggested several new and innovative acquisition partnerships for LAC to explore.

Most significantly, the necessity for Acquisition teams to work in close collaboration with our Preservation colleagues has never been more apparent. To become acquainted with preservation requirements and embed these considerations in acquisition work flows clearly benefits both the development of LAC’s digital collections and ensures their discoverability, both now and far into the future.

Annie Murray (Associate University Librarian for Archives and Special Collections, University of Calgary)
Rock Music: A Digital Preservation Gateway Drug
Rock and pop music are ubiquitous, but the audiovisual recordings that house music present a preservation challenge for memory institutions. I will show how the acquisition of the EMI Music Canada Archive is a gateway to the development of comprehensive digital preservation planning in Libraries and Cultural Resources at the University of Calgary.

The EMI archive consists of more than 5,500 boxes of materials, including more than 40,000 audiovisual recordings, some of which are at great risk of degradation. With the support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the migration of these recordings is underway. What of the resulting digital assets? How will they be managed and preserved? The EMI project has spurred reflection and analysis of the library’s overall capacity to store, manage, preserve, and provide access to a variety of digital assets.

I will highlight the components of our emerging capacity to preserve this collection, and all of our digital assets. I will describe the library’s development and planning related to staff expertise, equipment, network infrastructure, storage, and the implementation of a digital asset management system. Lastly, I will highlight the preservation challenges and opportunities presented by this large and complex archive.

Mireille Nappert (Digital Processing Archivist, Canadian Centre for Architecture)
Preserving Software for Long-term Access to CAD Files
The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) has been collecting digital materials for over 1O years now. In the past few years, it has established workflows to process and preserve these digital objects, which can range from a simple Word document to a Rhino or form*Z model. Most CAD formats are traditionally proprietary and there is no automated way to update file formats to current available software. Acquiring and preserving software, through donations and partnerships is vital in order to provide access to the original files on the long term. The talk will overview the need to preserve software for access to complex digital objects; mention the type of work involved in order to retain the software and reuse it to access files; and indicate software preservation initiatives from other organization (YALE, Software Preservation Network, etc.)

Umar Qasim, PhD (Digital Preservation Officer, University of Alberta and Chair of Portage’s Preservation Expert Group)
Portage’s Federated Approach to Preserve Canadian Research Data
Launched in 2015 by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL), Portage Network is working to meet the data management and archiving needs of Canadian researchers. Portage is in a process of establishing an Open Archival Information System (OAIS) type archive that provides a platform to deposit, find, share and preserve research data. Portage works within the library community to coordinate expertise, services, and technology and planning to setup this archive in collaboration with several other key stakeholders.

The Portage’s Preservation Expert Group (PEG) is working to identify the challenges that need to be addressed by Portage and other stakeholders in order to develop and improve RDM capacity and infrastructure across the country, especially as it relates to the long-term preservation of research data. PEG members have recently authored a position paper which provides a framework within which digital preservation can be defined, discussed and achieved in the Canadian context. It also provides a set of guiding principles that reflect the values and commitments of organizations and communities already involved in this work.

Tim Walsh (Digital Preservation Librarian, Concordia University)
Bulk Reviewer: A Software Application for Managing Sensitive Information in Digital Archives
Bulk Reviewer is a software application designed to help librarians, archivists, and other digital preservation practitioners to identify, review, and remove files containing sensitive information in digital archives. Bulk Reviewer scans directories and disk images for personally identifying information (PII) and other sensitive information using bulk_extractor, a best-in-class open source digital forensics tool, and presents results in a review dashboard, enabling easier detection and dismissal of false positives. It provides the ability to generate CSV reports about inputs as well as the ability to export files from directories and disk images, separating problematic files from those that are free of sensitive information.

This project was started while the author was a 2018 Summer Fellow at the Library Innovation Lab at Harvard University. It is built using Django, Django Rest Framework, Celery, Django Channels, and Vue.js.  It is currently under active development as a research project at Concordia University Library, and is still in the exploratory/prototype phase. Topics to explore in the lightning talk include work done on the application so far as well as anticipated future development, including customization of existing open-source tools to better support the needs of Canadian institutions and data.

Jess Whyte  (Digital Asset Librarian, University of Toronto)
Automating Forensic Disk Imaging for Accuracy, Efficiency, and Data Reuse
The University of Toronto Libraries (UTL) is currently migrating content off at-risk digital media in its collections. One media format, floppy disks, poses a particular challenge in its heterogeneity and the skill level required to extract data in a manner that is sound. We needed a way to image these disks that reduced those barriers, was error-proof for student employees, and scalable.

We found that traditional GUI tools for imaging floppy disks were quite slow, required entering the same information in multiple locations, and introduced too many opportunities for error or inconsistency.

The solution, a script and workstation setup, has reduced our input errors, reuses existing metadata in the UTL system, produces consistent output, and speeds up our processes. Instead of being able to image 5-6 disks/hr, we can now image 10-12 disks/hr, and our quality control and verification processes are improved.

This lightning talk will cover the challenge presented, an overview of the script, and a quick demo of the process.