Preserving Data & Creating Digital Collections

How do we preserve digital information?

This week Cohen and Rozenweig begin by addressing the issue of longevity of digital information.    Having never thought about this before, I assumed that there was a standard out there somewhere, but it seems there isn’t.  Hardware changes so rapidly that it’s impossible to keep up, and software is even worse.  After considering the obvious question of what is worthy of preservation, they move on to some things that would not have occurred to me, like documenting your website for posterity and leaving some flexibility in the code (XHML versus XML or HTML).  They leave the reader with some very practical tips: don’t design around specific hardware and software, consider future use as much as current needs, and the basics of backing things up (do it regularly and save more than one copy in more than one place).

Cohen and Rozenweig have lots to say about creating historical collections online, from the reasons for building one in the first place (flexibility, accessibility, collaboration and longevity) to what lends itself to an online collection and what doesn’t.  A site focused on, say, submissions from WWII veterans probably won’t attract much interest, where a site on 1980s Casio digital watches (collected by uber-geeks the world over) definitely will.  They tackle the thorny problem of how to solicit contributions, pointing out the paradox that “to build a collection, you need a collection.”  Ultimately, it’s about building trust, being part of a community of interest and (surprisingly), not worrying too much about “qualitative concerns,” which the authors have found to be a non-issue for the most part.  The authors include a helpful case study using their own September 11 Digital Archive, which follows all of the best practices they suggest.

Having covered the basics, the next stop was the gigantic Library of Congress Digital Collections.  I dove into Chronicling America and Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs, which contains images of Confederate and Union soldiers and their wives and children, all available in JPEG and TIFF.  In addition to organizing and displaying all this great stuff, the LOC also includes a set of tips for preserving digital information: identify what’s important, decide what to keep, Export what you want, organize the collection, make copies and manage them in different places.  There’s even a downloadable brochure.  

Last, we looked at Flickr’s collaboration with the LOC called “The Commons.”  It’s filled with a huge variety of images from two collections (“1930s – 40s in Color” and “News in 1910”) that are posted with “no known [copyright] restrictions”.  By this, the LOC is indicating two things: “either there was a copyright on the image and it was not renewed,” or “the image is from a late 19th or early 20th century collection for which there is no evidence of any rights holder.”  They are clear that this “not mean the image is in the public domain, but [it] do[es] indicate that no evidence has been found to show that restrictions apply.”

Awkward Civil War Era Photograph.

The other interesting feature of The Commons is the ability to add tags and comments to images.  While this seems to have great potential for illuminating what might otherwise be lifeless photos, there are some concerns about the proliferation of tags and the extraneous comments that people post.  I can certainly understand how the latter might be a problem, but I looked at the last ten images posted and not only were there no goofy comments, but every single one of them in fact had at least one relevant, helpful post.  Perhaps those particular images just haven’t been up long enough to attract the oddballs.

The Center for History and New Media design Omecka (the database we’re using for Spokane Historical)?  I should have known.