Christoph Becker, Luis Faria and Kresimir Duretec
This article aims to evaluate a new architecture for scalable decision-making and control in preservation environments for its ability to address five key goals: scalable content…
Abstract
Purpose
This article aims to evaluate a new architecture for scalable decision-making and control in preservation environments for its ability to address five key goals: scalable content profiling; monitoring of compliance, risks and opportunities; efficient creation of trustworthy plans; context awareness; and loosely coupled preservation ecosystems. Scalable decision support and business intelligence capabilities are required to effectively secure content over time.
Design/methodology/approach
We conduct a systematic evaluation of the contributions of the SCAPE Planning and Watch suite to provide effective and scalable decision support capabilities. We discuss the quantitative and qualitative evaluation of advancing the state of art and report on a case study with a national library.
Findings
The system provides substantial capabilities for semi-automated, scalable decision-making and control of preservation functions in repositories. Well-defined interfaces allow a flexible integration with diverse institutional environments. The free and open nature of the tool suite further encourages global take-up in the repository communities.
Research limitations/implications
The article discusses a number of bottlenecks and factors limiting the real-world scalability of preservation environments. This includes data-intensive processing of large volumes of information, automated quality assurance for preservation actions, and the element of human decision-making. We outline open issues and future work.
Practical implications
The open nature of the software suite enables stewardship organizations to integrate the components with their own preservation environments and to contribute to the ongoing improvement of the systems.
Originality/value
The paper reports on innovative research and development to provide preservation capabilities. The results of the assessment demonstrate how the system advances the control of digital preservation operations from ad hoc decision-making to proactive, continuous preservation management, through a context-aware planning and monitoring cycle integrated with operational systems.
Details
Keywords
Christoph Becker, Luis Faria and Kresimir Duretec
Preservation environments such as repositories need scalable and context-aware preservation planning and monitoring capabilities to ensure continued accessibility of content over…
Abstract
Purpose
Preservation environments such as repositories need scalable and context-aware preservation planning and monitoring capabilities to ensure continued accessibility of content over time. This article identifies a number of gaps in the systems and mechanisms currently available and presents a new, innovative architecture for scalable decision-making and control in such environments.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper illustrates the state of the art in preservation planning and monitoring, highlights the key challenges faced by repositories to provide scalable decision-making and monitoring facilities, and presents the contributions of the SCAPE Planning and Watch suite to provide such capabilities.
Findings
The presented architecture makes preservation planning and monitoring context-aware through a semantic representation of key organizational factors, and integrates this with a business intelligence system that collects and reasons upon preservation-relevant information.
Research limitations/implications
The architecture has been implemented in the SCAPE Planning and Watch suite. Integration with repositories and external information sources provide powerful preservation capabilities that can be freely integrated with virtually any repository.
Practical implications
The open nature of the software suite enables stewardship organizations to integrate the components with their own preservation environments and to contribute to the ongoing improvement of the systems.
Originality/value
The paper reports on innovative research and development to provide preservation capabilities. The results enable proactive, continuous preservation management through a context-aware planning and monitoring cycle integrated with operational systems.