Hi all,
From the diglib list, and perhaps of interest to many mcn folk:
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Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 10:06:10 -0500
To: [email protected]
From: Stephen Abrams <[email protected]>
Subject: Harvard announces Global Digital Format Registry (GDFR) project
The Harvard University Library (HUL) is pleased to announce that it
has received a grant of $600,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation for the development of a registry of authoritative
information about digital formats. Detailed information about the
format of digital resources is fundamental to their preservation.
The two-year project will result in a new Global Digital Format
Registry (GDFR), which will become a key international
infrastructure component for the digital preservation programs of
libraries, archives and other institutions with the responsibility
for keeping digital resources viable over time.
Development of the Registry will be informed by the considerable
expertise in digital preservation the Harvard libraries have
acquired through Harvard's Library Digital Initiative (LDI). An
earlier Harvard contribution to the international digital
preservation community is JHOVE <http://hul.harvard.edu/jhove/>, a
tool developed in cooperation with JSTOR that is widely used to
analyze and validate the format of digital objects.
The wide diversity and rapid pace of adoption and abandonment of
digital formats present an ongoing problem for long-term
preservation efforts. As noted in the October 2002 planning report
of the Library of Congress ("Preserving Our Digital Heritage: Plan
for the National Digital Information Infrastructure Preservation
Program"), "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."
According to Dale Flecker, associate director of the Harvard
University Library, "All digital preservation programs must document
the format of the objects they are preserving. Without precise
knowledge of format, a digital object is merely a collection of
undifferentiated bits. Creating a shared registry of such
documentation will save an enormous amount of duplicative effort in
acquiring and recording such documentation. It also allows the
community to share expertise in formats, so that each institution
does not require deep local expertise in every format of data it is
preserving."
GDFR will be established as a distributed service in which
participating research libraries, archives, and other organizations
with preservation responsibilities can contribute, as well as use,
format-typing information. According to Stephen Abrams, digital
library program manager in HUL's Office for Information Systems,
"GDFR will be a sustainable service available to any preservation
institution that chooses to participate. From the outset, we've
envisioned the registry as a distributed network of individual
nodes. Each node will have a full copy of all the format-typing
data in the GDFR. Carefully vetted information and updates will be
distributed among the nodes following appropriate technical review.
GDFR will also provide a separate track for distributing non-vetted
information, so that problems and issues identified in the course of
daily work can be quickly shared by participants."
Major American research libraries are supporting Harvard's efforts
to develop the GDFR. MacKenzie Smith, associate director of
technology for the MIT Libraries, stated, "The establishment of a
digital format registry will be a major contribution to our ability
to keep digital content viable into the future, and I am grateful
that Harvard is willing to take the initiative to build it and
coordinate our efforts to use it." In the words of John Ockerbloom,
digital library planner and architect for the University of
Pennsylvania Library, "Such a system will aid in digital development
and preservation not only at my library, but also at many other
institutions worldwide. Having open, globally recognized naming,
definitions, and documentation of data formats will greatly improve
the abilities of libraries and content-management software to use,
adapt and share a wide variety of digital content."
For current information and updates on GDFR, including information
about job opportunities, visit the project web site at
<http://hul.harvard.edu/gdfr/>.
---
Stephen L. Abrams
Digital Library Program Manager
Harvard University Library, Office for Information Systems
1280 Massachusetts Avenue, Suite 404
Cambridge, MA 02138
T +1 (617) 495-3724
F +1 (617) 495-0491
E [email protected]
W http://hul.harvard.edu/~stephen/
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_________________________________________________________________
Rob Lancefield [email protected]
Manager of Museum Information Services / Registrar of Collections
Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University www.wesleyan.edu/dac
301 High Street, Middletown CT 06459 USA tel. 860.685.2965
Board of Directors, Museum Computer Network www.mcn.edu
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