Contents:
- 1 Table of Contents
- 2 List of Figures
- 3 List of Tables
- 4 Executive Summary
- 5 Introduction
- 6 Problems affecting Digital AV Contents
- 7 IT-based strategies against Digital AV Loss
- 8 Conceptual Risk Management Framework
- 9 Conclusions
- 10 References
- 11 Glossary
This deliverable from the DAVID project addresses two major topics. First, the definition and implementation of IT strategies to mitigate ‘digital damage’ to AV material by ensuring the robustness of technology, people and processes involved in digital preservation. The second section presents a conceptual risk management framework that proposes a way to plan and execute preservation processes in such a way that reduces the risk of ‘damage’ to AV content. This second section includes an introduction to a proposed preservation metadata model that serves as the interface between the steps in the framework and enables a unified approach to data gathering from the different tools and devices used in AV preservation workflows.After defining what ‘digital damage’ is within the context of the project, it goes on to describe some standard IT strategies (avoid, mitigate, recover) that should be implemented to ensure ‘robustness’ in the preservation process chain. Case studies follow from two project partners: INA (Institut National de l’Audiovisuel, France) and ORF (oesterreichischer rundfunk), Austria; these describe what strategies these two institutions currently employ to mitigate risk to AV content.The second part of the report presents the risk management framework as well as a preservation metadata model, that used together can help mitigate risk during preservation processing. The model is designed to ensure that the disparate metadata generated across the IT preservation infrastructure is harnessed for use in an automated risk management application. Both the framework and metadata model have been designed considering interoperablitity with PREMIS and MPEG-21 and uses the SPOT Model to classify the impact of risks.
This deliverable offers those responsible for developing and managing robust IT based preservation workflows for AV content not only a good overview of where damage is most likely to occur but also a thorough summation of related IT strategies an archive should undertake to manage collections for the long-term. The case studies offer a more concrete insight into the practical application of such strategies. Its definition of digital damage is also clearly explained: “any degradation of the value of AV content with respect to its intended use by its designated community that arises from the process of ingesting, storing, migrating, transferring or accessing the content.” The project is focused on the potential risks in IT processes implemented in the preservation workflow, not on related archive governance issues (selection policy, etc.). It emphasizes business process management; the authors state that they find failures are usually not a result of random failure but are generally due to systemic errors such as format choices, tool misconfiguration and process changes. Thus the need to implement robust risk assessment of business processes which then relies on a consistent registration of process actions in preservation metadata. The sections presenting the preservation metadata model and workflow/business process modeling and related risk assessment tool development are still conceptual at this point although the inclusion of an ORF case study on the topic attempts to make it more concrete; the project intends to describe the actual implementation of the developed models within a preservation workflow in future deliverables. Those with more background in developing such models may find these sections easier to read.