Ensuring Longterm Access to Digital Information
Geoffrey Brown
Office address: Lindley Hall 330B
Indiana University, Bloomington IN, 47405 USA
Office phone: 812-855-4207
Department fax: 812-855-4829
http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~geobrown
Time/Place
Tuesday/Thursday 1:00-2:15, WH116
Description
Rapid advances in computer technology have created a massive preservation problem -- while almost all documents are now ``born digital'', many documents created only 10-15 years ago are already unusable on modern PCs. For example, the US Government Printing Office issues almost all government statistics in electronic format and many of these data require specific software for access; some of these applications are now obsolete. The National Library in the Netherlands is building a digital archive of scientific papers which depend upon resources such as fonts which may not be available in the long term. Even modern art is threatened -- many contemporary pieces depend upon software executing on obsolete platforms. The net result is that some believe we may be living in a digital dark age from which large parts of our cultural heritage will be lost to future generations.
The goal of this seminar is to examine the software issues relating to the preservation of digital content. Specifically, we will consider the types of digital content that might be preserved, the techniques that can be used to preserve them, and the tasks the are required to implement these techniques.
The seminar will not be purely technical -- we will read policy documents to understand the fundamental requirements of preservation. For example, historians care about document provenance; in considering preservation technologies it's important to understand what it means to preserve a document's provenance.
It is intended that this seminar be accessible both to students of computer science and library science with the readings and assignments chosen accordingly.
Attendance
This will be taught as a seminar. There will be weekly readings, students will be expected to participate in, and occasionally lead discussions. Therefore, attendence is manditory
Assignments
The primary work required for this course is a substantial paper or project. There will be occasional study problems requiring a short report. In addition, every student will be expected to lead the discussion on one topic (depending upon enrollment we may do this in pairs).
Grading
- Project: 60%
- Short reports: 20%
- Participation: 20%