Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 14
Advanced Preservation Analysis
Co-author Esther Conway
So far we have used the OAIS terminology for digital preservation. Now we turn
to a complementary way of looking at it. We can say that the challenge of digital
preservation of scientific data lies in the need to preserve not only the dataset itself
but also the ability it has to deliver knowledge to a future user community. This
entails allowing future users to reanalyze the data within new contexts. Thus, in
order to carry out meaningful preservation we need to ensure that future users are
equipped with the necessary information to re-use the data.
Note that it would be foolish to even try to anticipate all possible uses for a piece
of data; instead we can try to at least enable future users to understand the data
well enough to do what current data users are able to do. Further uses are then only
limited by the imagination and ability of those future users - they will not be held
back by our lack of preparation.
In this chapter we discuss in some detail the creation of “research assets” for
current and future users.
The Digital Curation Centre SCARP [
166
] and CASPAR [
2
] projects have
a strong focus on the preservation and curation requirements for scientific data
sets. These projects engaged with a number of archives based at the STFC [
167
]
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. In particular extensive analysis was carried out
to consider the preservation requirements of the British Atmospheric Data Centre
[
168
], the World Data Centre [
169
] and the European Incoherent Scatter Scientific
Association (EISCAT) [
170
]. During these studies it became clear that there was a
need for a consistent preservation analysis methodology.
There are currently a number of tools available which have focus on digi-
tal preservation requirements. Drambora [
171
] provides audit/risk assessment and
PLATTER [
172
] provides planning on the repository level but they do not provide
an adequate analysis methodology for data set specific requirements. The Planets
[
173
] planning tool Plato [
174
] deals with objects within a collection on an individ-
ual basis but does not examine the inclusion of additional digital information objects
and how they interact to permit the meaningful re-use of data.
We describe next a new approach to preservation analysis which has been
developed.
