I’m writing and publishing mostly right now on my two reference model sites,
a] Long-Term Digital Preservation Reference Model : www.ltdprm.org
b] Information Lifecycle Management 2.0 (ILM2.0) Reference Model: www.ilm20.org
So, instead of lots of blog posts – jump over to either of these sites and participate in the reference model communities we’ve started there and contribute.
I strongly urge you to read and distribute this new report from the SNIA – “Building a Terminology Bridge: Guidelines to Digital Information Retention and Preservation Practices in the Datacenter.” It took 2 years to develop, research, vet, socialize, educate, build consensus within SNIA alone. An effort that tried my patience and fortitude at times. But, I’m here for the long run and this report is a masterful contribution to the industry.
This report is essential for a long list of practices such as these:
We encourage review and feedback.
Blog-roll
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Digital Curation Blog: SNIA “Terminology Bridge” report
By Chris Rusbridge
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SNIA Builds a Bridge—to Somewhere Important
Rick Bauer, Dir.Technology and Education, SNIA
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The Billion Year Ultra-Dense Memory Chip -
I love storage technology – the demand more more, cheaper, and faster will never end. Berkeley Labs brings us one of the most interesting technologies yet.
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2009/06/03/billion-year-ultra-dense-memory-chip/
One of the drivers now is long-term preservation. If we had long-term media, it would slow down the rate of and number of required migrations – we postulate. In any case, the domains of logical and physical migration are where we need to put a lot of effort and R&D otherwise the costs of preserving information for the long-term overwhelm everything else. This is where NARA is putting its money – to develop a long term storage architecture. It will be fun to watch all this unfold over the next 10 years.
I’ve been accused of throwing historical IT practices under the bus in my last posts. Well, in my opinion, we should.
IT practices that confuse or just don’t meet the business requirements or only add cost and complexity need to go away. The times are changing. We saw that clearly with regulatory compliance and eMail. We see it with eDiscovery and litigation review. Many IT practices damage metadata resulting in damage to authenticity. The courts keep getting closer and closer to exposing bad IT practices and I submit we need to start somewhere making improvements.
Metadata is a good example. Many IT practices damage, mix, confuse, or just plain ignore the value of metadata. (And, consequently denigrate its use to demonstrate authenticity.) This has to change.
a) Yes, it wasn’t until 2008 that Sedona recognized metadata in litigation evidence, but now it is important.
b) Aguilar v. Immigration &
Customs Enforcement Div., 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 97018 ( Nov. 21, 2008 ) changed it all again, making certain metadata a key part of litigation evidence.
Another example is confusing archive and preservation – regulatory compliance hammered that. I believe that the IT premise we have to move toward could be framed “Preservation begins at creation.” The IT practice of archiving at the time information becomes inactive or expired is too late, too costly, too complex, and too risky in the face of litigation and compliance risk.
Oh, let’s add ‘deletion’ to the list: Even the records community is at fault here. The whole idea of ‘disposition after information expires’ is ludicrous for the digital datacenter. I maintain disposition policies must be made up front – consistent with ‘preservation policies begin at creation.’
This could be a stimulating conversation. Chip in.
Oh, and I’m far from alone in this opinion. Change is hard and the top barrier is human and cultural on one side and resistance from the vendor community protecting their installed base of revenue by propagating the myth on the other. I can’t blame them. I can only blame the IT community. I really like this anecdote from the “Backup Blog:” ”…Having said that, the biggest obstacle to fixing backup is not technology. It is inertia. It is cultural. It is fear of change. It is ingrained process. It is the fact that we have done things one way for so long that the reason we are going things has been forgotten…”
From FAQs for the SNIA report: “Building a Terminology Bridge: Guidelines for Retention and Preservation in the Datacenter”
Authenticity: is defined in a digital retention and preservation context as a practice of verifying a digital object has not changed. Authenticity attempts to identify that an object is currently the same genuine object that it was “originally” and verify that it has not changed over time unless that change is known and authorized. (The term integrity is not to be confused with authenticity. The objective of “integrity” is to prevent corruption or damage and is defined as the consistency, accuracy, and correctness of stored or transmitted data or information. Integrity and authenticity are both required to preserve information and data assets.) Authenticity verification requires the use of metadata. The critical change for IT practices is that metadata is now very important and must be safeguarded with the same priorities the data is. IT practices that damage, merge, ignore, or scramble metadata are no longer appropriate.