Associated Activities
IFLA-CDNL Alliance
for Bibliographic Standards (ICABS)
Preservation
Metadata
UNESCO Guidelines
IFLAPAC
ARROW Project:
Australian Repositories Online to the World
Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories
(APSR)
International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC)
The National Library of Australia is a member of the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC), a consortium of eleven national libraries and the Internet Archive, which has the following goals:- To enable the collection of a rich body of Internet content from around the world to be preserved in a way that it can be archived, secured and accessed over time.
- To foster the development and use of common tools, techniques and standards that enable the creation of international archives.
- To encourage and support national libraries everywhere to address Internet archiving and preservation.
The work of the IIPC is carried out through six working groups. The National Library of Australia is the leader of, and an active contributor to, the Deep Web Working Group, which is developing methods and tools for the identification of web sites that are inaccessible to crawlers, the collection and storage of these sites, and the provision of access to them. The Library is also a member of the Framework, Researcher Requirements, Content Management, and Metrics and Testbed Working Groups.
IFLA-CDNL Alliance for Bibliographic Standards (ICABS)
ICABS is a new alliance between IFLA and national libraries, established in August 2003 to continue and expand the coordination work formerly done by the IFLA UBCIM (Universal Bibliographic Control and International MARC) and UDT (Universal Dataflow and Telecommunnications) Core Programme Offices.
The National Library of Australia, the Library of Congress, The British Library, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, and Die Deutsche Bibliothek have agreed to participate in a joint alliance together with the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, IFLA and CDNL (Conference of Directors of National Libraries) to assure ongoing coordination, communication and support for key activities in the areas of bibliographic and resource control for all types of resources and related format and protocol standards.
The objectives of ICABS are:
- To coordinate activities aimed at the development of standards and practices for bibliographic and resource control, including metadata, persistent identifiers, and interoperability standards;
- To support the international exchange of bibliographic resources by supporting, promoting, developing, and testing the maintenance of metadata and format standards;
- To ensure the promotion of new conventions;
- To act as a clearinghouse for information on all IFLA endeavours in these fields;
- To organize and participate in seminars and workshops; and
- To enhance communication within the community.
These objectives are to be realised through a series of goals and actions agreed to during the IFLA Berlin Conference in 2003. See the ICABS web site for a full list of goals and actions.
The National Library of Australia has taken responsibility for two actions under the goal, Advance understanding of issues related to long-term archiving of electronic resources. They are:
- Action 3.3 Web harvesting. Explore and promote methods to archive web-based publications collected by web harvesting; and
- Action 3.4 Preservation of digital materials. Work out a survey of existing standards, guidelines and codes for preservation of digital materials (in cooperation with IFLA's Preservation and Conservation Section).
Action 3.3 Web Harvesting
The Library is making progress on this action through three activities.
- (i) Through membership of the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC), lead the work of the Deep Web Working Group.
- (ii) Hold an international conference on digital archiving. (The Archiving Web Resources International Conference is to be held 9-11 November 2004.)
- (iii) Automated deposit and archiving of online government resources (through the Commonwealth Metadata Pilot Project).
Preservation Metadata
To ensure long-term access to digital resources, information about them that will enable them to be managed as hardware and software changes must be recorded. This is commonly called preservation metadata, which is intended to store technical details on the format, structure and use of the digital content, the history of all actions performed on the resource, including changes and decisions, the authenticity information, such as technical features or custody history, and the responsibilities and rights information applicable to preservation actions.
More information about preservation metadata is available from the PADI web site.
The National Library of Australia has been aware of the importance of preservation metadata in maintaining long-term access to its own digital collections. In 1999 it issued an exposure draft, Preservation Metadata for Digital Collections, which defined 25 elements of information the Library believed is necessary for this purpose.
As a result of this work the Library was invited to join the OCLC/RLG Preservation Metadata Framework Working Group, which published Preservation Metadata for Digital Objects: A Review of the State of the Art in 2001, and to A Metadata Framework to Support the Preservation of Digital Objects in 2002.
UNESCO Guidelines
In order to remain accessible, digital resources require active and on-going preservation intervention as the underlying hardware and software on which they depend for display changes over time. This change often happens rapidly. Without active intervention heritage in digital formats will be lost. Concerned about the potential for significant loss of digital heritage of its member states, the UNESCO Division of Information Society contracted the National Library of Australia to prepare guidelines, to assist in drafting the Charter, and to organise a Regional Consultation Meeting for Asia and the Pacific, which was held in Canberra in November 2002. Further meetings were held in Managua (for Latin America and the Caribbean), Addis Ababa (for Africa), Riga (for the Baltic States) and Budapest (for Eastern Europe).
The Charter on the Preservation of Digital Heritage is now available on the UNESCO web site, as are the Guidelines for the Preservation of Digital Heritage.
The Guidelines are written in non-technical language and focus on principles behind the preservation-related decisions needed throughout the life of digital information. They are highly relevant to the library and archives sectors, but are also important wherever digital resources of enduring value are being produced.
For more information about the Charter and the Guidelines, and what motivated their preparation, a paper by Colin Webb, UNESCO Campaign to Preserve the "Digital Heritage" - and Consultations in Asia and the Pacific may be of interest.
IFLAPAC
IFLAPAC (The International Federation of Library Associations and Insitutions (IFLA) Core Programme on "Preservation and Conservation") operates from six national libraries around the world. The Focal Point (International Centre) at the Biblioteque Nationale in Paris coordinates the entire program. The goals of the program include raising awareness about preservation issues, encouraging research in preservation and conservation, and promoting training in these areas. The National Library hosts the IFLAPAC Centre for the Asia and Oceania region.
ARROW Project: Australian Research Repositories Online to the World
The National Library is a partner in the ARROW project (Australian Research Repositories Online to the World) which received funding in the latest round of grants from the Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training. A description of the project, and links to further information, is now available.
The ARROW project will identify and test a software solution or solutions to support best practice institutional digital repositories comprising e-prints, digital theses and electronic publishing. A wide range of digital content types will be managed in these repositories. The National Library of Australia will develop a repository and associated metadata to support independent scholars (those not associated with institutions). A complementary activity of ARROW is the development and testing of national resource discovery services (developed by the National Library) using metadata harvested from the institutional repositories, and the exposing of metadata to provide services via protocols and toolkits.
An Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (APSR)
Led by the Australian National University (ANU), this ambitious project encompasses the development of demonstrator repositories and support for the continuity and sustainability of digital collections. The inclusion of the Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing (APAC) will provide an opportunity to investigate the ramifications of accessing and managing the research data produced for and generated by Australia's grid infrastructure. The demonstrator repositories will be developed at the ANU, University of Sydney and University of Queensland.
One of the key streams of activity will be an exploration of the open source software known as DSpace, which is described as a "groundbreaking digital library system to capture, store, index, preserve, and redistribute the intellectual output of a university's research faculty in digital formats". The National Library will have a leading role in scoping and providing advisory services to higher education institutions relating to digital continuity through long-term preservation and collection management strategies.
