Welcome

Ms. Lisa Weber, CENDI Chair, opened the meeting at approximately 9:20 am EST. She thanked Amanda Wilson, David Jones, and the Department of Transportation for hosting the meeting.

Strategic Initiatives and Alliances

“The National Digital Stewardship Alliance: Community, Content, Commitment” Martha Anderson (LoC) Link to presentation (.pdf)

Ms. Anderson addressed the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP). There has been a history of organizations with similar goals and objectives over the years, which has been beneficial to the development of the NDIIPP. This collaborative effort among sectors has been fluid based on a preexisting trust factor among these groups. The alliance is community driven and alliance oriented.

Ms. Anderson described LOC's role with this organization as the secretariat which provides operational, logistical, planning, and collaborative services. The primary goal of the organization is to ensure access over time to a rich body of digital content through the establishment of a national network of partners committed to selecting, collecting and preserving at-risk digital information. The three primary strategies to accomplish this are catalyzing activities, learning by doing, and supporting collaboration.

There is a wide geographic distribution of organizations and agencies that comprise the NDIIPP and contribute to collecting and preserving diverse content, ranging from a few entities in the Midwest, to a strong concentration along coastal California, to very rich and diverse representation in the Northeastern and Eastern US. The NDIIPP is comprised of universities, state governments, state libraries, archives and historical societies, federal agencies, public broadcasting firms, commercial content distributors and owners, technology companies, and national libraries in the US and abroad.

The NDIIPP curates a conglomeration of informative material that can be “mashed up” with other digital formats to better relay the big picture and encompass detailed facets of side focus areas to strengthen the impact of the news being presented from a portfolio standpoint. For example, digital images, news articles, Twitter feeds, Facebook posts, maps, graphs, websites, and blogs were captured, mashed-up and preserved during the Iran elections last year. Moreover, digital images captured turmoil and stress first-hand, and Twitter feeds expressed the emotions of Iran's people.

Ms. Anderson emphasized that preservation is a series of handoffs, whether it be social or technologically based. Preservation is iterative, and each generation builds on the work of the last. Therefore, a major initiative of the NDIIPP is the National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA). The NDSA's summary objective is to provide a collaborative effort among government agencies, educational institutions, non-profit organizations, and business entities to preserve a distributed national digital collection for the benefit of citizens now and in the future.

NDSA values stewardship, collaboration, inclusiveness, and exchange. Members of the NDSA are committed to managing digital content for current and long-term use, and to ensure sustained access to the digital content that comprises our national history and empowers us as leaders in the global knowledge economy. Individually, these organizations support the management of digital resources; as an Alliance, it is committed to protecting our nation's cultural, scientific, scholarly, and business heritage.

Collaborative work is the centering value of the Alliance shared by all members and a priority in work with other organizations and associations. Approaching digital stewardship collaboratively allows the NDSA to coordinate effort, avoid duplicate work, build a community of practice, develop new preservation strategies, flexibly respond to a changing economic landscape, and build relationships to increase capacity to manage content beyond institutional boundaries.

The NDSA is a collaborative effort to preserve a distributed national digital collection for the benefit of current and future generations. It values the range of experience, the potential for innovation, and the fault-tolerance that heterogeneity brings. The NSDA believes the preservation of digital information is a pervasive challenge and that engaging across different communities strengthens the nation's digital preservation practices and increases the likelihood of preserving data now and into the future.

Members of the Alliance encourage the open exchange of ideas, services, and software. This leverages the commitments of each member to increase the capacity of the entire stewardship network. In this way, the acts of participation and engagement result in innovations and benefits that can be shared by all.”

The Library of Congress and members of the NDSA are committed to serving as digital stewards of America's national digital collection and to employing standards, systems, and cooperative relationships that advance digital stewardship. Members commit to pursuing and participating in collaborative stewardship endeavors for at-risk digital content.

There are 69 member organizations that have joined since its inception in 2010 http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/ndsa/. A few examples include: FLICC, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, California Digital Library, Harvard University, NARA, and the National Conference of State Legislatures. Membership is open to any organization committed to the preservation of digital cultural heritage. The one requirement is that each member must serve on at least one working group. The NDSA also supports working groups within these five areas: content, infrastructure, innovation, outreach, standards and practices.

Some of the major goals of the Content Working Group are to identify content already preserved, investigate guidelines for the selection of significant content, enable discovery of at-risk digital content of collections, and match orphan content with NDSA partners who will acquire the content, preserve it, and provide access to it. Some of the outcomes of 2011 thus far include a working registry of content that is already preserved by NDSA members and a clearinghouse is being developed that will enable a variety of stakeholders to identify and adopt at-risk collections.

The Infrastructure Working Group focuses on building a community for sharing information and best practices about the development and maintenance of tools and systems for the curation, preservation, storage, hosting, migration, or similar activities for the long term preservation of digital content. Some of the outcomes of 2011 include a resource for sharing and documenting emerging practices for the use, development and sharing of open source tools and other software that enable digital preservation, as well as computer forensic tools that enable digital preservation. Additionally, there is potential use of large-scale storage and cloud infrastructures for preservation.

Working groups that focus on innovation encourage and share innovative methods of digital preservation practices and technologies in order to distribute, document, and share emerging concepts, while conducting and guiding research and development with engaged partners to find solutions where none exist.

Outreach working groups focus on building relationships with stakeholder communities. They identify and assess tools that the NDSA community needs for communication. In addition, these working groups help identify, prepare, and promote key digital preservation information resources. Outreach efforts recognize and act on opportunities that benefit the NDSA and the larger community. Some of the outcomes of 2011 thus far include: a public awareness campaign, broadening the spread of the message through social media, and the identification of new communities and partners.

The working groups that focus on standards and practices facilitate a community-wide understanding of the role of standards in digital preservation and how to use them effectively to ensure durable collections. One of the outcomes of 2011 is to compose a map of the digital preservation standards landscape.

In terms of meetings, the NDSA supports both virtual gatherings and meetings where people come together in person. There is an annual in-person meeting each July. This year, the annual meeting will be July 11, 2011, in Washington, DC. Tim O'Reilly will be the keynote speaker. For the first three years of membership, there are no membership dues. The LOC subsidizes the Secretariat and logistical efforts.

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“The Smithsonian Institution: A Technology Overview” Carmen Iannacone (SI) Link to presentation (.pdf)

Mr. Iannacone began his presentation by recognizing CENDI member involvement with informatics related projects at the Smithsonian Institution (SI). Some examples of joint projects include: The Encyclopedia of Life, The Barcode of Life (DNA collections), the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies, and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) Informatics [Office in Panama].

SI is America‟s largest national education facility with 19 museums, nine research centers, and over 160 million affiliate museums around the world. The SI is over 165 years old and employs approximately 3,000 people. There are just as many volunteers as employees that support SI projects and activities.

The SI has five different publications (magazines), two panda bears, six Grammy awards (ten nominations), its own cable TV channel, and over 137 million objects within its museums. It has its own space shuttle and other fixed wing aircrafts, along with the original 13 colonies settlement US flag, and holds ownership of the Hope Diamond. There are 160 locations tied to SI in some fashion, and they possess several supercomputers for highly technical projects.

Mr. Iannacone noted that with all of these diverse collections, systems, resources, and staff, the SI does amazing work in research, preservation, exploration and exposition on behalf of the public.

The SI has a very diverse set of personnel. Some of the most prevalent fields of expertise include: astrophysicists, computer scientists, curators, biologists, education/outreach specialists, informatics analysts, financial analysts, statisticians, anthropologists, antiquities specialists, aviation historians, botanists, veterinarians, researchers, librarians, archivists, horticulturists, cartographers, event planners, security guards, conservators, exhibition specialists, zoologists, repairmen, and ethnomusicologists.

One notable example of the diversity of SI personnel can be tied to the US Airways plane crash in the Hudson River. It was, in fact, one of SI‟s forensic microbiologists that identified the bird species that caused engine malfunction and failure that led to the emergency landing. Another example of unique societal contribution was the forensic anthropological study that facially reconstructed The Dune Lady based on an age regression model.

The SI has also contributed significantly to the development, deployment, and field based robotic operations of one of the existing Mars Exploration Rovers. Mr. Iannacone gave credit to the scientist who is actively involved with robotic communication.

As part of the SI strategic plan for the future, SI denoted four grand challenges that must be met: (1) unlocking the mysteries of the universe, (2) understanding and sustaining a biodiverse planet, (3) valuing world cultures, and (4) understanding the American experience. Mr. Iannacone emphasized that “a dynamic, evolving environment poses questions to our staff, our funders, and our constituents.” Some examples include how do we best shepherd the collections; what experiences and ways of interacting do our constituents seek; and what decisions must we make with respect to technology and change management?

The technology initiatives for broadening access involves a diverse and complex list of technology platforms including the modern web, the SI Commons, mobile computing, Tablets and Microsoft™ Surface, and 3D digitization and fabrication.

The traditional web can be used to learn about SI‟s various missions and collections. The SI website has been redesigned to improve discovery by freeing visitors from having to know the organizational structure to find the information they seek, highlighting SI‟s social media offerings, improving search, improving accessibility, and reflecting SI‟s new strategic imperatives. However, the main constraint for SI‟s web strategy is the conflict between enhancing the site and staying with the existing infrastructure, and SI has limited funds to allocate to this project.

The following much needed improvements have been made to the website:

• Incorporated Google Translate for multiple ethnic user communities
• Installed user specific portals with new navigation labels that use action words for clarity
• Installed a photo slide show at the top of the webpage paragraph section to promote SI exhibitions and events, IMAX offerings, and research findings
• Focused on visual appeal with links to important visitor information, exhibitions, collections, and the Encyclopedia Smithsonian to explore by topic or interest
• Included a link to popular visitor-related questions and important information regarding operating hours, current exhibitions, and more
• Provided a calendar format call-out box that shows upcoming events that are retrieved from SI‟s internal database for easy viewing and schedule matching
• Restructured promotion banners for commercial offerings
• Included government mandated information on the bottom of the page
• Provided social media links throughout the website
• Enabled a donation button within the homepage

One of the most significant improvements to the website has been improved precision and recall of SI searches. There is more practical functionality in the search results, making the interface and search vehicle more user friendly. Additional tools and functionalities within the website also improve the user experience. Features like the “Browse Aloud Screen Reader” and its compliance with Section 508 guidelines and W3C are examples.

The promotions of mobile offerings are very beneficial to the overall business of SI. They are always developing new mobile applications and utilizing social media vehicles to market and advertise. Currently, there are 42 Facebook pages, 29 YouTube channels, 29 Twitter feeds, 18 Flickr accounts, 14 podcast venues, seven mobile websites, five mobile applications, a virtual world, and an alternate reality game. These are vitally important in today‟s society, since 96 percent of all Millennials (the generation born between 1980-2000) have at least one social media account.

Mr. Iannacone then shifted gears and talked about how the SI Commons aligns with broadening access. He defined a „commons‟ as a set of resources maintained in the public sphere for the use and benefit of everyone. One example was shown through an organized workshop where raw materials can be found and assembled into new things. The major characteristics of a commons include: federated, designed for users, findable, shareable, reusable, free, bulk download, machine readable, high resolution, collaboration without control, network effects, and public domain. Playing off of these characteristics, Mr. Iannacone showed “Citizen Scientist” as a prototype example. Essentially, users can conduct better research through SI and develop websites and blogs relating to science topics of their interest and broadcast them to the public.

Two very popular mobile applications for the public are called MEanderthal and Mobile.NASM.SI.edu.

Microsoft™ Surface has been a huge benefit to SI. The goal of this technology is the make learning fun and easy at the same time. These touchscreen surfaces allow a user to participate in puzzles and quizzes to learn about major inventions, how these ideas were constructed and their impacts on society.

In terms of 3D digitization and fabrication, SI has utilized cutting edge 3D scanning technology to replicate artifacts and other important objects. Mr. Iannacone showed one example of a damaged statue and how it was scanned and repaired to produce a replicated structure.

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