Transcript Problems & Potentials of Rich Media

The Challenge of Media Preservation:
Digital Works and Time-Based Media
Howard Besser
NYU Archiving and Preservation Program
and Library Senior Scientist
http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/~howard
http://www.tisch.nyu.edu/preservation/
Besser--Lazerow 12/10/02
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The Challenge of Media Preservation:
Digital Works and Time-Based Media
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How these works differ from conventional
works
Preservation problems they pose
Necessary paradigm shifts
Importance of managed environments,
metadata, ancillary materials
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Conventional Works
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Manuscripts, books, paintings, sculpture
We have a good sense of what the original object
is
Objective is to make object itself endure
(temperature/humidity control,
chemicals/pigments/fibers/adhesives, …)
Goal is to keep object as close as possible to
original state (though occasionally contraversy
arises over whether to let aging show)
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Electronic Media
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Video, audio, digital, new media
Often difficult to determine what the original object is
Difficult to make the original object endure (magnetic
particle deterioration, warping, etc.)
Even if we could make the original object endure, we
wouldn’t have the infrastructure to view it in the future
Need to develop a paradigm shift from preserving the
original object to preserving info content
Need to pay more attention to maintaining authenticity and
replicating user experience
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Preserving electronic media:
What’s the problem & What can we do
about it?
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The Problem: Maintaining Accessibility to a Work over time
New Products and New Expectations necessitate New Paradigms
The Easy Part of the Problem: Physical storage devices &
hardware players
The Hard Part of the Problem: File Formats
Problems with Many Types of Digital Works Today
Special Characteristics of Electronic Works
What is the Work?
Some approaches to solutions
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Serious Digital Longevity
Problems
 What
we know from prior widespread
digital file formats
 Non-text works separating from their
metadata
 Inaccessibility of software needed to view a
non-text work
 Inability to even decode the file format of a
non-text work
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The Problem:
Maintaining Accessibility to a
Work over time
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Preservation techniques for Physical
artifacts do NOT address the problem of
preserving electronic works
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Need to shift from preserving Physical
Artifact to preserving disembodied content
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Electronic Art is not like canvas
paintings
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In the future these may include
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Moving image materials
Multimedia
Interactive programs (including hypertext novels & games)
Computer generated art
These works share some common characteristics
with other “strange” works like
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Performance Art
Conceptual Art
Site-specific installations
Experiential Art
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Thinking of the Future (1/2)
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Screens will be different resolutions and
different aspect ratios
CRTs won’t exist
A decade or 2 from now, today’s user
interfaces will look like arrow-key
navigation looks like today
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Thinking of the Future (2/2)
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Today’s streaming media are small
windows, slow speeds
As bandwidth increases, viewers will expect
higher quality streams
Creators may need to consider how they’ll
be able to deliver higher-bandwidth streams
– Delivery Derivatives vs. Masters encoded w/standards
– May also want to re-edit the piece to take advantage of
changes in technology, viewer expectations, society-
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The Easy Part of the Problem:
Physical storage devices &
hardware players
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Analog - EIAJ 30
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Analog - U-Matic
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Analog - VHS & Betacam
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8mm video
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Digital -128M Optical
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Digital - Optical R/W
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Digital - DAT
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Digital - Syquest
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Digital - Zip 100
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Digital - Writeable CD-ROM
(650M)
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Edison
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Early Wax
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The Hard Part of the Problem:
File Formats
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even with text like Wordstar & Word
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Problems with Many Types of
Digital Works Today Disappearing
Information
 The Viewing Problem
 The Scrambling Problem
 The Inter-relation Problem
 The Custodial Problem
 The Translation Problem
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The Viewing Problem
 Digital
Info requires a whole infrastructure
to view it
 Each piece of that infrastructure is changing
at an incredibly rapid rate
 How can we ever hope to deal with all the
permutations and combinations
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The Scrambling Problem
Dangers from:
 Compression
to ease storage & delivery
 Container Architecture to enhance digital
commerce
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The Inter-relation Problem
 -Info
is increasingly inter-related to other
info
 -How do we make our own Info persist
when it points to and integrates with Info
owned by others?
 -What is the boundary of a set of
information (or even of a digital object)?
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The Custodial Problem
 In
the past, much of survival was due to
redundancy
 How do we decide what to save?
 Who should save it?
Mellon-funded E-Journal Archives
 How
should they save it?-
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The Custodial Problem:
How to save information?
 Methods
for later access
Refreshing
Migration
Emulation
 Issues
of authenticity and evidence
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The Translation Problem
 Content
translated into new delivery devices
changes meaning
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-A photo vs. a painting
-If Info is produced originally in digital form in
one encoded format, will it be the same when
translated into another format?
Behaviors
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Serious Longevity Problems
 What
we know from prior widespread
electronic file formats
 Previous formats required little ongoing
intervention (remote storage facilities, Iron
Mtn); digital formats require intense
ongoing management
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Conceptual Approaches to
Digital Preservation
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Refreshing always necessary due to
volatility of physical strata
– Impact on evidential value
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Migration -- advantages & disadvantages
Emulation -- advantages & disadvantages
And will need a long-term managed
environment-
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Managed Environment
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More than temperature & humidity control
Periodic monitoring of the works
Periodic monitoring of the technical
environment for viewing the works
(software, systems, hardware)
Trusted repositories-
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OCLC/RLG
Digital Repository Attributes
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Administrative responsibility
Organizational viability
Financial sustainability
Technological suitability
System security
Procedural accountability
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OCLC/RLG
Selected Recommendations
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Policies, Certification processes, Risk management,
Persistent ID, Migration/Emulation experiments
Stakeholders meet to decide how to describe what is in a
dig repository
Examine special properties of particular classes of digital
objects
Technical standards for exchange and interoperability btwn
repositories
Develop projects and case studies
Copyright issues
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Preservation Repositories:
Open Archival Info System Model
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High-level reference model describing submission,
organization and management, and continuing access
Conceptual framework for different organizations to share
discussions with a common language
Producers, consumers, management, actual repository
SIP, DIP, AIP
AIP consists of data objects plus representation info
(Content, Preservation Description, Packaging,
Descriptive)
Originally developed for Space Science community
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Preservation Repositories:
Open Archival Info System Model
Consumer
Producer
Management
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Older Longevity Projects
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Longevity/
 CPA Task
Force
 Getty “Time & Bits” Conference & Follow-ups Preservation experiments in US and Europe
 NEDLIB,
CURL, Michigan
 Internet Archive
 Long
Now
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Other Digital Preservation Activities
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LC Natl Dig Info Infrastructure & Preservation
InterPARES
Emulation Projects
E-Journal Archiving
ERPANET
Persistent Naming
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LC’s National Digital
Information Infrastructure and
Preservation Program
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Authorized Dec 2000
LC, Dept of Commerce, NARA, White House
Office of Sci & Tech Policy
with help from CLIR, NLM, NAL, OCLC, RLG
Ongoing collab process
Commissioned papers on preserving: the Web,
periodicals, digital sound, E-Books, Digital TV,
Digital Video
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InterPARES
International Research on Permanent Authentication
Records in Electronic Systems
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Ongoing international archival world project
examining how to make electronically-generated
records last over time
Developing the theoretical and methodological
knowledge needed, then will formulate model
policies, strategies, and standards
Next year will be extended to include images and
rich media
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Emulation Projects
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CAMiLEON (Michigan/Leeds)
NEDLIB
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E-Journal Archiving
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Issues
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License, don’t own; may not be even able to obtain right to make archival
copy
Increasingly no paper back-up at all
Usually we don’t have the important redundancy factor
Mellon funded projects (2001)
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Yale, Harvard, Penn working w/individual publishers
Cornell, NYPL--specific disciplines
MIT exploring characteristics that change (dynamic)\
Stanford--archiving software tools
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Electronic Resource Preservation
and Access NETwork (ERPANET)
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Best practices and skills development for
digital preservation of cultural heritage and
scientific objects
3 year project launched Nov 2001; 1.2
million Euros
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NEA 2001 grant to BAVC
for $150,000
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“To support development and dissemination
of a DVD that contains a curriculum for the
preservation of electronic art. The DVD will
feature a preservation overview; discussions
with conservators, artists, curators and
technicians; a curriculum to train
professionals in the field and project case
studies to conserve electronic art.”
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Special Characteristics of
Electronic Works
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What Really is the Work?Disappearing software
Enormous number of elements can, at times, be very important to
preserve (randomness, interactivity, pacing, color, format, original
artifact, elements used to construct the artifact)
Pieces and Boundaries
Recontextualization (Postmodernism)--which rendition to save?
Dynamic & Lack of Fixity (evolving works)
Interactivity
Historical context
Difficulty of authentication over time
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What’s special about Cult
Heritage Materials?
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Images & rich media
Inter-relationships btwn parts
For Contemporary Art: What is the Work?-
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What Really is the Work?-
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LeWitt: Wall Drawing 340
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Installing LeWitt
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LeWitt Install Directions
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ECI - Imagespace (early 80s)
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ECI - Hole in Space (both)
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ECI - 84-locations
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ECI - 84-Community Memory
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ECI - 84-kids
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ECI - 84-MOCA
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ECI - 84-Annotating Video
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ECI - Avatars & Humans
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Video Technology to Make the
Head Spin (NYT 3/2/00)
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Special Characteristics of
Electronic Works (again)
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What Really is the Work?Disappearing software
Enormous number of elements can, at times, be very important to
preserve (randomness, interactivity, pacing, color, format, original
artifact, elements used to construct the artifact)
Pieces and Boundaries
Recontextualization (Postmodernism)--which rendition to save?
Dynamic & Lack of Fixity (evolving works)
Interactivity
Historical context
Difficulty of authentication over time
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More Technical Issues
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Complexity of formats (storage & compression)
Synchronicity between media/streams
Persistent IdsWebsite mgmt-
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Persistent IDs--the Problem
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Need to separate work ID from work
location
URNs probably won’t be ready until 2003
Becomes a business process issue when one
organization maintains the resource and
another organization references it (ie.
licensed from vendors or managed by
separate administrative structures)
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More Persistent IDs
--the Approach for today
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PURLs
Handles
HTTP redirects
And worry about costs now and conversion
costs when URNs become feasible
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Website Management
More issues with referencing IDs
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References for mirror sites
References for back-up sites when main site
is down or bottle-necked
References for off-site copies and archival
copies
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Pieces of the General Solution
(1/2)
 -We
need to insist upon clearly readable
standardized ways for digital objects to selfidentify their formats
 -We should discourage scrambling
 -We need to better understand information
inter-relates to other Info, and what
constitutes “boundaries” of Info objects
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Pieces of the General Solution
(2/2)
 -People
and organizations wishing to make
information persist need guidelines of how
to go about doing it
 -We need to better understand how
translating from one storage or display
format to another affects the meaning of a
work
 -We need to save the “behaviors” of a
digital
object, not just it’s “contents”
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Metadata & Standards can be
the first line of defense
 Can
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tell you
where the file is (if you can’t find the file)
where more info about the file is (if you have
the file but most other metadata has become
separated)
what the file format is
what the compression scheme is
what application program and version is needed
for the file
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From the technological point of view:
Standards offer the best hope
of overcoming Impediments
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Easier to maintain a single set of standards
over long periods of time
Puts your institution in the same large boat
with lots of other institutions who will face
obsolescence and migration problems
periodically throughout the future
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What can we do specific to
electronic media?
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Works themselves may no longer even exist; in many cases, what we
can save amounts to forensic evidence
Enormous number of elements can, at times, be very important to
preserve (pacing, original artifact, elements used to construct the
artifact)
Too complex to save every one of these aspects for every type of
material
Importance of saving pieces, representations, and documentation
Involve creators & curators to capture intentions
Importance of Standards
Familiarize ourselves with recent conservation developments
(Guggenheim’s Variable Media, Who Knows?, TechArcheology, Tate,
IMAP)-
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Standards for encoding
artists intentions
(group efforts w/i Cult Heritage community)
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Artists Interviews Project, Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage
1998-1999, Modern Art: Who Cares
(http://www.icn.nl/english/6.4.2.html)
TechArcheology: A Symposium on Installation Preservation
(SFMOMA)
More recent SFMOMA/Tate collaborations
IMAP
Guggenheim’s Variable Media
Need to be expanded to include curators’ & viewers’ reaction to the
work
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Authors Intentions: Kendall Example
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Things that can be done
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Save documentation about the work and its
context
Save interviews with viewers about the experience
Construct repositories that save software, works,
hardware, and engage in ongoing emulation
Encode creators’ intentions
Adhere to non-proprietary software/standards as
much as possible-
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Tensions around Standards
Follow Standards (No Quicktime, Realmedia, DHTML, Flash, …)
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innovative, new functions
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Structural Metadata Standards
for Encoding Multimedia_
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SMIL
MPEG 4
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Synchronized Multimedia
Integration Language (SMIL)
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For repurposing and reuse in different ways
Use XML to reference various pieces in different
ways
Supported by Realmedia but not Microsoft or
Macromedia
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MPEG 4
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Object-oriented
Very low level of granularity (even objects vs
backgrounds)
Scaleable bandwidth use
Binary Format for Scenes (BIFS) borrows
concepts from VRML
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Identification/Provenance
(Still Images)
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The number of variant forms of a work can be enormous
Image Families
A digital image frequently has many layers of parentage
Information about the parentage that can indicate the
quality and veracity of the image (Dublin Core "Source"
and "Relation")
how to deal with different versions derived from the same
scan or different encoding schemes
Vocabulary Standards to express this
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The number of variant forms
of a work can be enormous
 different
views of the same object
 different scans of the same photo
 different resolutions
 different compression schemes
 different compression ratios
 different file storage formats
 different details of the same image
 ...
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Image Families
Identification/Provenance
 how
to deal with different versions (browse,
hi-res, medium res) derived from the same
scan or different encoding schemes (TIFF,
PICT, JFIF)
 Vocabulary Standards to express this
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VRA Surrogate Categories
CIMI's "Image Elements”
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Incorporate parts of Functional
Requirements for
Bibliographic Records (FRBR)
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work
expression
manifestion
item
(and push into “change history” section of
Technical Image Metadata)
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NISO/DLF Technical Image
Metadata Workshop--4/99
(Z39.87-2002 draft)
 create
metadata needed to manage images
in digital repositories over long periods of
time (full life-cycle mgmt)
 document image provenance & history
 ensure that the images will be rendered
accurately on any output device
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http://www.delos-nsf.actorswg.cdlib.org/
DELOS/NSF Working Group
Reference Models
for
Digital Libraries:
Actors and Roles
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NSF/DELOS Actors/Roles
Project
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Classes of Actors, including
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Persons
Organizations
automata
Roles & implications
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Production
Dissemination
Management
use
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Multimedia & Collaborative
Authorship imply
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Not only:
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Authors
Editors
Publishers
But also creators of
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Text
Illustrations
Composers
Musicians...
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New products & Shifts in user
expectations
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VCR led to user expectation of time-shifting,
which in turn created market for video-on-demand
and cinema multiplexes with staggered times
WWW will further increase expectation of
immediacy, as well as:
– viewing massive amounts of related materials
– viewing material in fragmented ways
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DVDs are even further increasing need for
ancillary materials, as well as for interactivity and
viewing fragments
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Key Paradigm Shifts for
Libraries/Museums/Archives
(also implications for creators)
Maintain long-term managed environment
(life-cycle if possible)
_ From archiving completed whole works to
asset mgmt of both component parts of
works and ancillary materials related to the
work
_ From preserving a physical artifact to
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saving
a digital work that has no tangible
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Saving Component Parts &
Ancillary Materials
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Edit decision list
Out-takes
Special effects
Initial casting calls
Sketches of sets
Interviews
Scripts...
If the Archivists don’t act to save these, their role will be marginalized. Need
to proactively seek out material that may be routinely tossed out.
_ These materials may become important for either re-issuing the piece in a later
version, or for future curators trying to understand the artist’s intention enough
to re-display the piece when all the software used is no longer available.
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Not just saving the Work,
but also saving Conservation
info about the Work
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Condition Report
UK National Trust
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Annotated Image
Mississippi State, Heather Gray
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Polarizws Image
Mississippi State, Heather Gray
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X-Ray
Investigating the Renaissance--Portrait of a Man, Fogg Museum
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Underdrawing
Investigating the Renaissance--Last Judgment, Fogg Museum
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How Best to save these?
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Use Standards wherever possible
Be aggressive about asset mgmt -- saving
component parts and ancillary materials
Both creator and Archive should develop an
institution-wide plan for saving electronic works
– Refreshing and either migration or emulation
– Standard encoding schemes
– What is the work? And prioritize what needs to be
saved
– Save ancillary materials and records
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NYU Moving Image Archiving
Program (MIAP)
2 year MA Program
_ train future professionals to manage preservationlevel collections of film, video, new media, and
other types of digital works
_ Provide prospective collection managers and
archivists with an international, comprehensive
education in the theories, methods, and practices
of moving image archiving and preservation
_ Curriculum will cover all aspects of moving image
archiving
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MIAP Program Training
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Film History/Historiography and Film Style
Conservation, Preservation, Storage, and Management
Legal Issues and Copyright
Laboratory Techniques
Moving Image Cataloging
Curatorial Work and Museum Studies
Programming
New Media and other Digital Technologies
Access to Archival Holdings
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NYU MIAP Courses
Introduction to Moving Image Archiving and Preservation
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Film History/Historiography
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Film Form and Film Sense
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Television History and Culture
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History and Culture of Museums, Archives, and other Repositories
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Conservation & Preservation of Moving Image Material--Principles
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Collection Management
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Access to Moving image Collections
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Copyright, Legal Issues, and Policy
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Handling New Media
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The Archive, the Collection, the Museum
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Curating, Programming, Exhibiting, and Repurposing/Recontextualizing Moving Image Material
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Film Restoration
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Video Restoration
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Digital Preservation and Restoration
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Elective or Independent Study
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Advanced Preservation Studies Workshop
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Thesis or Portfolio
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The Challenge of Media Preservation:
Digital Works & Time-based Media
Howard Besser
NYU Archiving and Preservation Program
and Library Senior Scientist
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Longevity/
 http://www.longnow.com/10klibrary/TimeBitsDisc/
 http://www.oclc.org/digitalpreservation/presmeta_wp.pdf
 http://is.gseis.ucla.edu/us-interpares/
 http://www.archive.org/
 http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue7_6/besser/index.html
 http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/~howard/Metadata/UC-May00/
 http://www.niso.org/commitau.html
 http://www.ecafe.com/
 http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/~howard
 http://www.tisch.nyu.edu/preservation/
Besser--Lazerow
12/10/02

101