Washington, D.C.
October 15-17, 1997

Preservation of Digital Information

UCC USDA Digital Publications: Creating a Preservation Action Plan

Evelyn Frangakis, Preservation Officer
National Agricultural Library

I’d like to refer back, momentarily, to Jeff Rothenberg’s presentation, to the point of discussion about Shakespeare’s sonnet. We have done something similar at NAL, but we have looked to the Bible for inspiration. We have taken a psalm and translated it to the psalm of the digital life. This psalm was born during a challenging digital moment, when a colleague came to me and said, “I don’t think I want to hear the ‘D’ word any more.” I’d like to share the resulting creative energy output with you:

Psalm of the Digital Life - 2

Digital imaging is my destiny.
I will not print.
It cleanseth the shelves of paper.
It restoreth my access.
It draggeth me into computer science,
for the common good.

Yea, though I surf through the ether
of bits and bytes,
I will begrudge no computer sapient.
They provideth me a necklace of perl scripts
in the tapestry of information
and grindeth my brain to bits.

Surely “file inaccessible” and memory overload
Shall follow me all the days of my life
and I shall dwell in the house of pixelated information
forever.

(by Evelyn Frangakis and Eileen McVey, September 1997, National Agricultural Library)

The National Agricultural Library (NAL) has a historical role in obtaining, maintaining, and making available for use print materials of the U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). NAL and Cornell have had a long-standing cooperative relationships, predating the report, A National Preservation Program for Agricultural Literature, produced by Nancy Gwinn in cooperation with the U. S. Agricultural Information Network (USAIN). The handout, “Status of the National Preservation Program for Agricultural Literature,” graphically depicts the relationships and responsibilities for areas of the agriculture literature that need to be preserved and lists who will participate in those efforts. This status report states that a great deal has been accomplished to date. In addition, Cornell has just applied for another round of NEH funding to continue the state and local literature component. Should funding be forthcoming, work will be underway toward systematic preservation of the relevant literature in fifteen of the fifty states. That represents thirty percent of the long-range goal of this component of the national plan. At the completion of all phases of this national project, approximately 9,000 titles and 15,000 volumes published between 1820 and 1945 will be preserved, from a diverse cross-section of fifteen states, representative of the history of American agricultural and rural life. That’s just to give a perspective of where we’re coming from and where we’re moving toward.

Today the USDA is increasingly, and in some instances exclusively, publishing information in electronic form. USDA digital publications produced need to be systematically identified, prioritized, preserved, and archived. While important, sometimes these electronic publications are extremely transitory. For example, NAL’s attempts to locate, catalog and provide access to the annual issues of USDA’s Agriculture Fact Book in electronic form illustrate why it is important to develop a plan to ensure continued access to data representing earlier editions. When the 1995 edition of the Agriculture Fact Book was made available electronically, its preceding electronic edition was removed from its location on a remote computer to make space for the new edition. NAL had entered a record for the electronic editions but had no means to ensure continued access to the complete set of electronic versions. Solutions to the problems of maintaining the entire body of electronic publications and making them available for as long as needed call for cooperative efforts. NAL will need to partner with USDA agencies, related federal agencies and other stakeholders to capture and preserve these important electronic agricultural resources.

Given that a number of USDA agencies have begun publishing exclusively in electronic form, the NAL and other key stakeholders and responsible parties believe it is essential to develop a preservation plan for digital USDA publications as soon as possible. Such a plan will need to be developed together with the Department’s Chief Information Officer and key representatives of all USDA agencies, other responsible Federal government entities, such as the Government Printing Office (GPO) and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the land-grant university libraries, and other non-governmental institutions and groups in the agricultural community.

The NAL, with the Economic Research Service (ERS) of the USDA, GPO, Cornell University, and the Farm Foundation recently took the first step in a cooperative venture by convening a 2-day meeting, held March 3-4,1997 in Washington, DC, with representatives of many of the above groups to begin to identify the major elements and requirements of such a plan. Under the auspices of the NAL, the meeting was organized by Cornell University’s Albert R. Mann Library. The meeting served as a call to action to develop a preservation strategy for USDA digital publications.

The first day set the stage for work ahead by providing models and perspectives of responsible parties and key stakeholders. The second day was devoted to action. Participants were assigned to one of four breakout groups, which met all morning, to address a range of questions on a given issue in order to work toward drafting a preservation action plan. The following elements of a plan were discussed:

• the management framework and related institutional roles and responsibilities, both inside the Department and externally, in the long-term preservation of digital USDA publications;

• the underlying technological infrastructure and technical document management requirements;

• the development of long-term retention criteria and processes for digital USDA publications; and

• the main issues in long-term user access to and retrieval of those digital publications.

The afternoon was devoted to breakout group report results and a plenary discussion of the elements of a national plan. The results of the Institutional Roles discussion were very influential in shaping the plan, as the organizational structure is being taken directly from the results of that group’s discussion. Much of the discussion in the plan and annexes regarding retention and deselection criteria reflects the discussion of the long-term retention criteria breakout group. Similarly, many of the main points regarding User Access and Technical Requirements are represented in the guidelines set forth in the plan and in the discussion contained in the annexes.

Based on the results of this meeting, an initial preservation plan has been developed for discussion within the Department over the next few months. This preliminary plan identifies the principal USDA agencies involved, resources required, and steps to be taken in the near term as well as over an extended period of time. This plan will serve as a discussion draft for obtaining commitment and support to proceed with this important initiative.

Now I would like to refer you to the summary handout titled, Framework For The Preservation of and Permanent Public Access to USDA Digital Publications. In it you will find the proposed organizational model for preserving USDA digital publications. NAL has a central role in this effort and there are a great number of key stakeholders and responsible parties interacting in this proposed relationship. The plan calls for a steering committee to be organized to oversee the plan. The steering committee will have three task groups under it, the: Task Group on Inventory and Life-Cycle Management, Task Group on Technical Requirements, and Task Group on User Access and Retrieval.

The remainder of the handout provides an executive summary of the plan that was produced as a result of the March meeting. It is recommended that the plan’s implementation be based on a management model with the following attributes: a customer orientation; distributed responsibilities with minimized levels of bureaucracy and improved leveraging of resources; procedural and technical standardization; and cost minimization. Specific organizational actions refer to the steering committee and its responsibilities, including defining the management structure, recommending to the Secretary how preservation and public distribution of these digital publications should be funded on a permanent basis, identifying legislative or administrative actions or policies that will be required to implement the plan, and establishing any task groups or pilot projects that are necessary, and conducting periodic assessments.

In conclusion, the next steps in the preservation of USDA digital publications initiative will include:

*The NAL Director will present the Framework For The Preservation of and Permanent Public Access to USDA Digital Publications to the USDA Chief Information Officer for subsequent distribution and endorsement throughout the USDA.

*The Framework will be distributed to participants of the “National Conference on Creating an Action Plan for Preserving USDA Digital Publications.”

*The Framework will be made widely available to external stakeholders for endorsement.

*A budget request to USDA will be developed to initiate key aspects of the plan.

*Funding will be requested for a pilot project to apply the Framework to a microcosm of USDA digital publications.

*Discussions will continue with key stakeholders such as GPO, NARA, and NSF to gather information on proceeding with a digital publications preservation pilot. As a result of initial discussions with these groups, several USDA agencies have already emerged as possible sites for implementation of the digital publications preservation pilot.