[Dspace-general] questions for music library association article

[MacKenzie Smith]

Hi Carli,

These are pretty big questions for a quick answer, but here's my best try.

>Question 1) I assume that the bit preservation includes some means of
>preventing, or at least making obvious as a new file, any sort of alteration
>of files previously preserved. Can someone tell me a little bit about that?

This is implementation specific. By default, a new file would be added as a 
new item. It could, in principle, be added as a new bitstream to an 
existing item/bundle. In either case some linkage needs to be made in the 
metadata to show the version relationship between the two files. Since you 
can't now edit bitstreams that have been submitted to DSpace that pretty 
much rules out changing it without anyone noticing.

>Question 2) I am assuming, for the purposes of my article, that the central
>mission of Dspace is archiving new research material, especially
>born-digital, and that preservation of digital files made from materials in
>library collections is a lucky spin-off, where administrations are willing
>to devote space to such collateral material. Certainly my own university is
>currently happy to get material to practice on from any source, if we can
>just get our act together to provide it. Is this correct?

The purpose of DSpace is as a digital asset management system with 
archival/preservation ambitions. Whether your institutions wants to use it 
to archive new faculty research, or digital library collections, or 
archival special collections, or administrative records, or teaching 
material, or what have you, is a matter of local institutional policy. We 
have certainly optimized the system for faculty research material (we hope) 
and are actively developing its support for long-term preservation, but 
these uses aren't constraints of DSpace.

>Question 3) Can anyone provide anecdotes from experience having to do with
>preserving sound or video files, or multimedia files, from actual
>collections? I've only seen "tests."

Not yet. This is still very much a research topic. For video check out the 
Moving Image Collections project and the work going on at NYU and UCLA in 
this area. Audio, look at Harvard's Library Digital Initiative and the 
Library of Congress's American Memory project. They've made a lot of 
progress on digital audio and video formats, but it's a moving target.

>Question 4) Can anyone speak about experiences (good or bad) of being a
>collection curator entering into the process of developing their role in a
>"community?" My own experience so far is limited by the fact that I'm
>library technical support staff, not a collection curator, and therefore not
>personally in control of a collection I want to have preserved on D-space. I
>get the impression there are a lot of people like me out there; excited by
>the prospect but a little overwhelmed by administrative "starting friction,"
>particularly including costs associated with data capture, despite all of
>the support offered up front for uploading the captured data.

I can't really address this one... although MIT certainly has collection 
curators who are grappling with the policies, costs, and technical demands 
of preserving digital collections, in collaboration with the DSpace 
technical staff and other systems folks. I think we're all in the process 
of working on these organizational issues and it, too, will be a moving 
target for many years.

Hope this helps, and best wishes for your article,



MacKenzie Smith
Associate Director for Technology
MIT Libraries
Building 14S-308
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA  02139
(617)253-8184
kenzie at mit.edu