As the review of the extent of the response to technology within the digital preservation community in Section 1.5 documented, file formats have been the most common focus of responses to technological change by digital curators, specifically the need and the means to avoid the obsolescence of existing file formats. That review identified gaps that this research addressed. First, there is a gap in the scope of interest in technology developments for digital preservation. Within the broad landscape of technology developments, the immediate priority and the scope of interest in monitoring and responding to technology for digital preservation has been file formats. This gap was addressed by the investigation of technological change, the results of which are discussed in Chapter 2. Second, there is a gap in the range of responses to technology for digital preservation. Defined by the scope of interest in technology developments, the response to technology by the digital preservation community has been largely limited to avoiding file format obsolescence. This gap was addressed by the investigation of technology responses, the results of which are discussed in Chapter 3. Third, there is a gap in the means to evaluate technology and respond to technology. This gap was addressed by the development of the
technology response model for digital preservation discussed in Chapter 4 and the application of the model to the technology response example discussed in Chapter 5.
What is needed is a model of technology responsiveness that addresses these gaps.
The first gap identified was the limited scope of existing technology assessment approaches within the digital preservation community. Using the basic definition of digital content discussed in Section 1.3, considering this gap began with the definition of a basic hierarchy of technologies that are used by digital curators for digital preservation to consider where this technology example fits in the hierarchy. Digital content consists of file formats and metadata that are stored as digital objects on digital storage media. Digital objects are typically grouped into
collections of digital objects. Digital content is created using software, sometimes an individual software package and sometimes an information system. Digital content creators or digital curators typically manage digital content in an information system, called a digital repository. A digital repository is implemented by an
organisation on a technology platform that consists of a combination of software and hardware. Placing the technology response example within this sequence, an object-based system is an example of a technology that might be used to create digital content to be preserved by digital curators and to preserve digital content that might have been created by other technologies. The research refined and extended this basic technology hierarchy to include other technological and organisational components, as discussed in Section 2.5 and Section 2.6.
The second gap identified was the lack of range of responses to technology.
The review of the extent of the response to technology by the digital preservation community documented that the response has largely been limited to avoiding file format obsolescence. Unlike the application of digital preservation strategies that are of necessity developed in response to known technologies pertaining to existing digital content, potential responses to technology for digital preservation need not be limited to monitoring existing technologies to protect existing digital content from obsolescence. Formulating responses might begin, rather, with an exploration of a new or enhanced technology to consider both its opportunities and its challenges for future digital content and for digital preservation more generally, e.g., to enhance tools and procedures, to enable new repositories and capabilities, or to educate and train digital curators. The difference between the possible broader scope of
technology responsiveness for digital preservation as envisioned here and accepted practice within the digital preservation community for responding to technology distinguishes the scope of this research from existing technology responses for digital preservation. A thorough study of a broader scope of the problem and the full range of potential solutions may produce beneficial and unexpected results;
therefore, the larger scale of the problem is worth exploring.
The third gap identified was the absence of a comprehensive process to evaluate technology developments. The digital preservation strategies discussed in Section 1.3 have been developed by digital curators to preserve digital content that
results from specific implementations of combinations of technology developments.
The technology assessment applied to the technology response example was meant to be extensive and intensive enough to enable a digital curator to understand the range of possible implications of the technology for digital preservation. A comprehensive technology assessment should address more than the optimal preservation strategy for the types of digital content produced or affected by the technology to identify all of the opportunities and challenges presented by the technology. For example, the technology assessment would consider the broader implications the technology might have for the tools, the systems, the storage, and other aspects of digital preservation.
1.7.1 A Method of Technology Assessment and a Basic Model
The research sought existing approaches or examples to adopt or adapt for use in comprehensive technology assessments for digital preservation. Archival appraisal is a process that is familiar to the archival community and that has been applied to electronic records, a specialised form of digital content and a product of technology. This section considers the characteristics of appraisal that prevent it from being a means for conducting full technology assessments for digital preservation and the possible contributions of appraisal to enabling technology responsiveness for digital preservation.
Archival appraisal is “the process of determining the length of time records should be retained, based on legal requirements and on their current and potential usefulness”.115 The literature of the archival community has included ongoing discussions about the theory and practice of archival appraisal.116
115 Richard Pearce-Moses, ‘Appraisal’, A Glossary,
http://www.archivists.org/glossary/term_details.asp?DefinitionKey=3 (accessed 15 April 2008).
116 Terry Cook, ‘From the Record to Its Context: The Theory and Practice of Archival Appraisal Since Jenkinson’, Society of Archives Journal 37 (1995): 32-52; Barbara Reed, ‘Diverse Influence:
An Exploration of Australian Appraisal Practice’, Archives and Manuscripts 31, no. 1 (2003): 63-82;
Robert Kretzschmar, ‘Archival Appraisal in Germany: A Decade of Theory, Strategies, and Practices’ Archival Science 5, no. 2-4 (2005): 219-238; and Carol Couture, ‘Archival Appraisal: A Status Report’, Archivaria 59 (2005): 83-107.
For electronic records, the process of archival appraisal is applied to individual instances of digital content – or records in this case – within a specific organisational and technological
context.117 The focus of appraisal is first on the content and then possible barriers presented by technology for preserving the specific set of records that is appraised.
One experienced appraisal archivist wrote that, “the archivists considering the records to be appraised will study their age, volume, and form, and will analyze their functional, evidential, and informational characteristics”.118 Archival appraisal is applied to specific or categorical instances of electronic records that are the products of a particular combination of technology developments, e.g., an electronic
recordkeeping system to track information about criminals identified and tracked by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as implemented using a version of a database software package.119 Appraisal has been generalised to apply to categories of electronic records based on the content of the records, e.g., finance records, but not typically applied to categories of electronic records produced by general categories of technology.120
The literature of the archival community has not included discussions of how archival appraisal might be applied to the assessment of technology developments more generally. The application of archival appraisal is too specific and applied at such a low and context-specific level to enable it to be used as a method to conduct full assessments of technology for digital preservation. Technology assessments for digital preservation should consider the cumulative results of appraisals of electronic records produced by relevant technologies. The recommendations produced by technology assessments should also contribute to the completion of appraisals of electronic records by informing appraisers about underlying technologies. Archival appraisal does not provide a process, produce results, or address technology in ways
Appraisals of electronic records view technology as a characteristic of the content, rather than as the focus of assessment.
117 As a senior archivist at the US National Archives and Records Administration, the author of this thesis prepared more than two hundred appraisal reports of electronic records created by dozens of agencies in the US Government between 1986 and 1996 and was responsible for developing and maintaining the appraisal procedures used by the Center for Electronic Records during that period.
This discussion is informed by that extended experience.
118 Maynard J. Brichford, Archives and Manuscripts: Appraisal and Accessioning, Chicago, IL:
Society of American Archivists, 1977.
119 This is an example of an appraisal of electronic records completed by the author of this thesis while working as a senior archivist at the Center for Electronic Records of the National Archives and records Administration in the USA.
120 Electronic mail is an example of a category of electronic records that has been identified by the generic computer application that produced the digital content, i.e., electronic mail software, but appraisals of electronic mail still focus on the content and purpose of messages and then on the specific technological environment that created the messages.
that would make it an effective approach to technology assessments for digital preservation.
To be broadly applicable and of greatest use, the technology assessment process would have to be able to consider generic characteristics that might be true of any implementation of the technology, rather than the specific characteristics of individual instances of a technology as appraisal does. A useful contribution appraisal offers for the development of an approach to technology assessment for digital preservation is an attention to the layers of context in which records exist.
“There are five analyses that make up the basic tools archivists need in their
appraisal kits to identify and select records of enduring value. These are an analysis:
of a record's functional characteristics – who made the record and for what purpose;
of the information in the record to determine its significance and quality; of the record in the context of parallel or related documentary sources; of the potential uses that are likely to be made of the record and the physical, legal, and intellectual limitations on access; of the cost of preserving the record weighed against the benefit of retaining the information”.121
121 Gerald F. Ham, Selecting and Appraising Archives and Manuscripts, Chicago, IL: Society of American Archivists, 1993, 51.
These appraisal analyses first consider the broadest context for the creation of the record, then the nature of the record, then the comparative importance of the record, and then the specific logistical considerations for preserving the record.
Building upon the concept of context from the appraisal process, the analysis for this research identified three layers of context that surround and would inform an assessment of a technology development. These layers identified a basic technology assessment model that was the starting point for the development of the
comprehensive technology response model for digital preservation that this research produced. As with the analyses for archival appraisal, each layer of context for an assessment of a technology development defines types of information that would inform the assessment.
1.7.2 A Preliminary Step from Method to Model
The first layer of the basic model, general technology context, refers to the broadest landscape of the universe of information technology developments. The information at this layer would provide extensive background for the assessment.
This layer might also identify technology developments that are not directly related to the specific technology development being evaluated, but that might have had an impact on the emergence of the targeted technology development. This layer
replicates the analysis of the broader organisational context of the records in archival appraisal. Similarly, the technology assessment process would first seek to
understand a new technology development by considering how it fits into its broadest context.
The second layer, the technology category context, refers to more specific and focused information about a major category of technology into which the target technology development fits. For the technology response example in this research, object-based systems, the technology category is information systems. This layer would provide intensive background about the technology category for the technology assessment. It would replicate the appraisal analysis to understand the nature of the records. This layer considers the components and elements that define the category as distinct from other categories, or the nature of the category. For this technology response example, the technology category layer would identify
attributes that are present in any information system.
The third layer, category examples context, refers to information about new and emerging technology developments. This layer would enable a very specific analysis of the technology development framed by the attributes of the technology category. It replicates the appraisal analysis of related records or sources. A new technology in some way complements or extends the capabilities of existing technologies.
These contextual layers for a basic model for the technology assessment piece of a technology response are illustrated in Figure 1-1. Applying the basic model to a technology assessment would accumulate information for each context
layer, moving from the outside to the inside layer, and repeat the process as new topics and issues that needed to be investigated were identified. As with archival appraisal, the information to be collected would include historical and current sources to situate the technology development in time and place and contribute to the understanding of the nature and characteristics of the technology development.
The process would seek information in the sources of whatever domains discussed topics relevant to the assessment. These processes defined a starting point for
developing the assessment component of technology responsiveness as illustrated by the contextual layers.
Figure 1-1. Contextual layers for a technology assessment.122
The technology response example, object-based systems, (see Chapter 5), demonstrated the application of the technology response model (Chapter 4), including the completion of a technology assessment.123
122 The diagram in Figure 1-1 was developed by the author of this thesis.
Object-based systems
123 Object-based refers to the way in which the system stores digital content. Digital content may be stored as digital objects and managed by an object-based repository. Object-based systems utilise object-oriented principles, a computing “methodology in which a system is modelled as a set of
consist of a combination of technology developments that do not fit within the scope of existing approaches for responding to technology. Existing approaches do not define an adequate means for evaluating complex technologies, such as object-based systems. The research addressed this lack.