Friends of the National Library of Australia inaugural travelling fellowship report.
Langley, Somaya
As the recipient of the inaugural Friends of the National Library
of Australia Travelling Fellowship, I travelled to the Bay Area in
California in early August 2006 to visit several institutions that are
tackling issues associated with complex born-digital objects. In
particular, the objective was to study a variety of models used in the
preservation of 'complex objects'--items made up of multiple
interlinking parts and, for digital materials, a range of file types.
The three-week visit took me to the California Digital Library, the
Internet Archive, and the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.
I also attended the 2006 International Symposium on Electronic Art.
After familiarising myself with the Bay Area Rapid Transport (BART)
train system, I made my way to Oakland to meet John Kunze and other
staff at the California Digital Library. The California Digital Library
is exploring complex digital objects, primarily through text-based
documents and web archiving. We discussed issues such as how to define a
website's boundaries and the effectiveness of long-term persistent
identification. During my three days there, I investigated their Digital
Preservation Repository system architecture and workflow and how digital
materials are curated and packaged (using METS) for submission into the
repository.
From Oakland I travelled south to San Jose to attend the
International Symposium on Electronic Art--a conference coupled with
exhibitions, performances and displays of media-based works. Many works
were hybrid in form, comprising digital and mechanical components; many
incorporated sensor systems to monitor environmental conditions or
provide audience interactivity. Additionally, some works were mobile and
could be viewed as people roamed through the city. The long-term
preservation strategies of these highly complex works often focused on
documenting 'around the work' (such as recording video, still
images and written descriptions) rather than trying to preserve the
actual work. The emerging trend of hybrid works--from the literary,
visual and performing arts--will confront many of Australia's
cultural agencies. These works will pose a significant challenge in the
future.
At the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive I met with the
Director of Digital Media, Richard Rinehart, to discuss his Media Art
Notation System (MANS). This model uses the metaphor of a
'score' to document complex media artworks. Theoretically,
each artwork can be broken down into several components, and by
identifying each component's function, a work can potentially be
reconstructed using this documentation. I also had the opportunity to
attend the final day of Richard Rinehart's UC Berkeley summer
class, where we discussed the MANS model in relation to the creative
works exhibited at ISEA.
My final destination was the Presidio of San Francisco, where I met
with staff from the Internet Archive's Web Archiving and
Audiovisual Archive teams. We discussed strategies for web harvesting,
data storage, systems monitoring, their SmartCrawler project, and
managing the audiovisual archives. The Internet Archive's Moving
Image, Live Music and Audio archives are managed using two approaches:
the curated collection, in which files are restricted to standard
formats, and the 'non-curated' collection, which accepts any
file type with no guarantees of long-term access.
The knowledge gathered during my travelling fellowship will be
adopted into the National Library of Australia's Digital
Preservation Project, which will start in December 2006.
Further details of my study trip can be found on the blog:
http://complexobjects.blogspot.com/.
Somaya Langley
Digital Preservation Officer
