Mapping Cornell's Efforts

Institutions can use the merged model to assess their digital preservation activity. Cornell’s mapping revealed that many of the requisite pieces are in place, but not coordinated or integrated into a conceptual whole. Through separate projects and initiatives we have developed—or at minimum established a placeholder for development work to build upon—the majority of the OAIS merged digital preservation model components.

This information was current in 2005 and is available as an example.

Merged Digital Preservation Model

Administrative Responsibility: CUL/CIT Partnership
Cornell University Library and the Cornell Information Technologies (CIT) are collaborating on the administrative responsibility for collecting, managing, preserving, and providing access to critical digital content. CIT is Cornell's central information-technology organization, which facilitates campus-wide coordination of IT-related activities.

Cornell University has joined the DSpace Federation. DSpace is an open-source institutional repository system developed at MIT Library. Cornell’s DSpace implementation will be managed and maintained by the Library.

Organizational Viability: CUL Goals & Objectives
Cornell Library’s Goals and Objectives for 2002-2007 calls for providing Digital Life-Cycle Production Services, including a Common Depository System capable of ensuring systematic management and long-term preservation and accessibility of digital collections. CUL has assembled a working group to establish a OAIS over the next three years. CUL has also developed a digital preservation policy framework.

Digital Archives Border: Common Depository System
The Common Depository System (CDS) provides a focal point for digital preservation initiatives at Cornell. CDS is a collaborative initiative that brings together technologists, policy makers, metadata specialists, and preservation professionals from across the library and elsewhere, with the widespread owners and inheritors of the digital collections at Cornell. CDS began as a central depository for digital images and has evolved into a common depository system to address the preservation requirements of digital content in all formats. The name change reflects the decentralized environment at Cornell and the realization that while the implementation of depositories may not be physically centralized, there is a need for common practices and requirements to realize economies of scale and to maximize investments in digital preservation. Each digital archive instance for which the Library accepts long-term responsibility will conform to the established CDS requirements.

Financial Sustainability: Reallocation & New Money
The library is committed to minimizing its dependency on soft funding for digital efforts, including preservation, and has been reallocating current staff and resources, while seeking new, ongoing support.

Ingest: Digitization, Euclid, ArXiv
Material comes under Cornell’s stewardship through a number of venues, including institutional digitization efforts, electronic scholarly publishing ventures, such as Project Euclid, and formal repository arrangements, such as arXiv.

Storage/Data Management: DLIT
Cornell Library handles the physical and intellectual maintenance of digital content through a suite of services managed by the Digital Library and Information Technology (DLIT) division and contractual arrangements with CIT.

Preservation Planning: Digital Preservation Officer
In 2002, the Library’s first Digital Preservation Officer (DPO) was appointed, with responsibility for establishing a cohesive digital preservation program at Cornell. The DPO coordinates the development and implementation of preservation policy and serves as the liaison to digital preservation projects and initiatives.

Access: ENCompass, Luna, Insight
Cornell provides access through several systems, including ENCompass, a digital library management system from Endeavor Information Systems, and Insight, an image management system from Luna Imaging, Inc.

Procedural Accountability: To be Determined
This component has yet to be implemented. However, the Digital Preservation Officer is a member of the RLG/NARA Task Force on Digital Repository Certification. The first task of the CUL OAIS working group is to deconstruct the OAIS reference model into achievable requirements and conduct an intensive gap analysis of our current developments and digital assets.