Consortium of University Research Libraries (CURL) launches new Cedars project

Citation

(1998), "Consortium of University Research Libraries (CURL) launches new Cedars project", Asian Libraries, Vol. 7 No. 9. https://doi.org/10.1108/al.1998.17307iab.013

Consortium of University Research Libraries (CURL) launches new Cedars project

Consortium of University Research Libraries (CURL) launches new Cedars project

Just as academic libraries have an ongoing responsibility for the preservation and access of paper-based resources, they now have a new and more complex responsibility for digital resources. For digital materials, unlike paper, a library continues to have responsibility for ensuring long-term access to them irrespective of whether the burden for physically preserving that resource falls directly on the library or on a third party agency. For example in the case of an electronic journal, a publisher might have the ultimate role of preserving the physical digital object but the research library is responsible for providing long-term access to this material for its researchers. The need to devise strategies for digital preservation is both pressing and immediate, and these strategies will need to encompass all forms of digital information resources.

With these issues in mind the Cedars project aims to address strategic, methodological and practical issues and will provide guidance for libraries in best practice for digital preservation. In the UK, CURL is uniquely placed to lead this project. Digital preservation is a key issue for all its members. Under the overall direction of the CURL Management Board, Cedars will be based across three lead sites (Oxford, Leeds and Cambridge). Wider involvement from the community will come through focus groups, workshops and discussion lists. Cedars is a three-year project, funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) through the Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib).

Project objectives

The project aims to investigate strategies which will ensure that the digital information resources typically included in library collections may, with other non-digital objects, be preserved over the longer term. It order to achieve this aim the project plans to:

1. 1.

   promote awareness about the importance of digital preservation, both among university libraries and their users, and among the data-creating and data-supplying communities on which they depend.

2. 2.

   identify, document and disseminate strategic frameworks within which individual libraries can develop collection management policies which are appropriate to their needs and which can guide the necessary decision making to safeguard the long-term viability of any digital resources which are included in their collections.

3. 3.

   investigate, document and promote methods appropriate to the long-term preservation of different classes of digital resources typically included in library collections, and to develop costed and scalable models. There is an enormous range of digital resources (e.g. text, sound, pictures, moving images). In focusing on the following categories ,the project intends to identify techniques which can be generalised and extended to the full range of digital materials:

   • •

     digitised primary resources;

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     electronic journals;

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     large online databases;

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     :electronic ephemera; and

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     digital resources in which the intellectual content is bound to structure, form and behaviour.

   In meeting its objectives the project intends, wherever possible, to make use of work that has already been done and to build on existing expertise in digital preservation and digital collection management.

   Key outcomes of the project include:

   • •

     guidelines for developing collection management policies which will ensure the long-term viability of any digital resources included in the collection;

   • •

     demonstrator projects to test and promote the technical and organisational feasibility of a chosen strategy for digital preservation;

   • •

     methodological guidelines developed by the demonstrator projects providing guidance about how to preserve different classes of digital resources;

   • •

     clearly articulated preferences about data formats, content models and compression techniques which are most readily and cost-effectively preserved;

   • •

     publications of benefit to the whole higher education community, available on the WWW.

Web site

As project work evolves, all Cedars working papers and documentation will be available at the Cedars Web site: http://www.curl.ac.uk General information about the JISC Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib) can be found at http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/services/elib Information about JISC is available at http://www.jisc.ac.uk