Different Preservation Levels: The Case of Scholarly Digital Editions

Ensuring the long-term availability of research data forms an integral part of data management services. Where OAIS compliant digital preservation has been established in recent years, in almost all cases the services aim at the preservation of file-based objects. In the Digital Humanities, research...

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Main Authors: Elias Oltmanns, Tim Hasler, Wolfgang Peters-Kottig, Heinz-Günter Kuper
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Ubiquity Press 2019-10-01
Series:Data Science Journal
Subjects:
Online Access:https://datascience.codata.org/articles/852
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author Elias Oltmanns
Tim Hasler
Wolfgang Peters-Kottig
Heinz-Günter Kuper
author_facet Elias Oltmanns
Tim Hasler
Wolfgang Peters-Kottig
Heinz-Günter Kuper
author_sort Elias Oltmanns
collection DOAJ
description Ensuring the long-term availability of research data forms an integral part of data management services. Where OAIS compliant digital preservation has been established in recent years, in almost all cases the services aim at the preservation of file-based objects. In the Digital Humanities, research data is often represented in highly structured aggregations, such as Scholarly Digital Editions. Naturally, scholars would like their editions to remain functionally complete as long as possible. Besides standard components like webservers, the presentation typically relies on project specific code interacting with client software like webbrowsers. Especially the latter being subject to rapid change over time invariably makes such environments awkward to maintain once funding has ended. Pragmatic approaches have to be found in order to balance the curation effort and the maintainability of access to research data over time. A sketch of four potential service levels aiming at the long-term availability of research data in the humanities is outlined: (1) Continuous Maintenance, (2) Application Conservation, (3) Application Data Preservation, and (4) Bitstream Preservation. The first being too costly and the last hardly satisfactory in general, we suggest that the implementation of services by an infrastructure provider should concentrate on service levels 2 and 3. We explain their strengths and limitations considering the example of two Scholarly Digital Editions.
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spelling doaj.art-75a131426d9946deb40f0150a43ffca62022-12-22T00:06:15ZengUbiquity PressData Science Journal1683-14702019-10-0118110.5334/dsj-2019-051745Different Preservation Levels: The Case of Scholarly Digital EditionsElias Oltmanns0Tim Hasler1Wolfgang Peters-Kottig2Heinz-Günter Kuper3Department Scientific Information, Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum für Informationstechnik BerlinDepartment Scientific Information, Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum für Informationstechnik BerlinDepartment Scientific Information, Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum für Informationstechnik BerlinDepartment Scientific Information, Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum für Informationstechnik BerlinEnsuring the long-term availability of research data forms an integral part of data management services. Where OAIS compliant digital preservation has been established in recent years, in almost all cases the services aim at the preservation of file-based objects. In the Digital Humanities, research data is often represented in highly structured aggregations, such as Scholarly Digital Editions. Naturally, scholars would like their editions to remain functionally complete as long as possible. Besides standard components like webservers, the presentation typically relies on project specific code interacting with client software like webbrowsers. Especially the latter being subject to rapid change over time invariably makes such environments awkward to maintain once funding has ended. Pragmatic approaches have to be found in order to balance the curation effort and the maintainability of access to research data over time. A sketch of four potential service levels aiming at the long-term availability of research data in the humanities is outlined: (1) Continuous Maintenance, (2) Application Conservation, (3) Application Data Preservation, and (4) Bitstream Preservation. The first being too costly and the last hardly satisfactory in general, we suggest that the implementation of services by an infrastructure provider should concentrate on service levels 2 and 3. We explain their strengths and limitations considering the example of two Scholarly Digital Editions.https://datascience.codata.org/articles/852scholarly digital editionsdigital preservationinformation infrastructureservice levels
spellingShingle Elias Oltmanns
Tim Hasler
Wolfgang Peters-Kottig
Heinz-Günter Kuper
Different Preservation Levels: The Case of Scholarly Digital Editions
Data Science Journal
scholarly digital editions
digital preservation
information infrastructure
service levels
title Different Preservation Levels: The Case of Scholarly Digital Editions
title_full Different Preservation Levels: The Case of Scholarly Digital Editions
title_fullStr Different Preservation Levels: The Case of Scholarly Digital Editions
title_full_unstemmed Different Preservation Levels: The Case of Scholarly Digital Editions
title_short Different Preservation Levels: The Case of Scholarly Digital Editions
title_sort different preservation levels the case of scholarly digital editions
topic scholarly digital editions
digital preservation
information infrastructure
service levels
url https://datascience.codata.org/articles/852
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AT heinzgunterkuper differentpreservationlevelsthecaseofscholarlydigitaleditions