Tools of the Trade
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Session Moderator: Marcy Rosenkrantz, Director of Library Systems, Cornell University Library.
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Item Global Digital Format Registry (GDFR): An Interim Status ReportAbrams, Stephen (2006-10-27T17:28:58Z)The format of a digital object must be known in order to interpret the information content of that object properly. Strong format typing is therefore fundamental to the effective use, interchange, and preservation of all digitally-encoded content. In terms of the OAIS reference model, format typing is a component of an object's representation information. Formats themselves also have representation information--primarily, the set of syntactic and semantic rules for encoding content into digital form--that must be preserved to address the concern raised by the Library of Congress's recent planning report, Preserving Our Digital Heritage: "Longevity of digital data and the ability to read those data in the future depend upon standards for encoding and describing, but standards change over time." The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has funded an effort by the Harvard University Library to create a Global Digital Format Registry (GDFR) that will provide preservation practitioners with sustainable services to store, discover, and deliver representation information about digital formats. This presentation will provide an update on GDFR project activities.Item The Entity (N2T) Resolver: low-risk, low-cost persistent identificationKunze, John (2006-10-27T17:23:39Z)Low-Risk Persistent Identification: the "Entity" (N2T) Resolver -- The N2T ("entity") identifier resolver addresses the same problem as URN, Handle, and DOI resolvers, but does so without complex or proprietary software components. N2T is lower-risk than those resolvers because it relies only on off-the-shelf open-source components, and it is the only resolver to acknowledge and address the "namespace splitting problem". N2T (Name-to-Thing) is both a persistent identifier resolver and a consortium of cultural memory organizations. The consortium has no fees or requirements, and merely offers its members the option to publicize a protected form of their URLs supported by the resolver. The resolver is a small, standard web server run in several mirrored instances by consortium volunteers under one hostname rented for about $30 USD per year. The resolver works equally well with any identifier scheme (URLs, ARKs, Handles, DOIs, URNs, PURLs) that can be expressed inside a URL.Item Bringing Many Tools Together: Building a System of Co-operating OAIS's in the MathArc ProjectEnders, Markus; Kehoe, William; Smith, Adam (2006-10-27T17:21:27Z)Bringing many tools together to build a system of co-operating OAIS's in the MathArc project. The MathArc project has created a protocol, software, and registry that enable multiple institutions to share and store digital objects in each other's OAIS repositories, regardless of the nature of each system's underlying repository. In the pilot version, the Goettingen State and University Library (SUB) and the Cornell University Library (CUL) are sharing, storing, and managing collections preserved in Goettingen's kopal system (based on DIAS) and Cornell's CUL-OAIS (based on aDORe). The tools and standards used to build the system are familiar to those working in the digital preservation field and have been described and presented in many places. They include METS, OAI-PMH, PREMIS, JHOVE, LOCKSS, aDORe, and the kopal version of DIAS. This presentation describes not how they work individually, but how they all work together in the MathArc system.