Sustainability and Post-Digital Culture

Last night Nick Poole, CEO of the Collections Trust and Chair at Europeana Council of Content Providers and Aggregators, spoke about 'Sustainability and Post-Digital Culture' at the Centre for Sustainable Heritage, UCL. The talk was aimed at museums, though the issues under discussion could easily be applied to the entire cultural heritage sector. What follows is a brief report of his talk. Nick's slides are available here.

I'll begin by taking a brief stab at explaining the title. 'Post-digital' references the established ubiquity of technology within society and the fact that technological solutions are ever-present. While our own attitudes may still be playing catch-up, the technologies over which we worry and place much hope in equal measure have been long-established.

So what's next? Reportedly, Jacques Attali, president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, stated that museums could not provide a basis for sound investment, apparently lacking any understanding of their own value or how to leverage their content. In part, this is an understandable assumption - while museums certainly know the value of their content, it is the ability to communicate that value to outside stakeholders that is often lacking. It's an obvious parallel with libraries, though it's interesting to be reminded that museums have not even seen anything like the widespread public support that the libraries have managed to conjure up in the face of the UK Government's cuts.

In museums, the practice of collecting content has remained the same, more or less, from the beginning, but a profound change has occurred in the way museums engage with the public. At this point in time, a 'critical mass success' model applied to digital content creation is not going to work. In simply massing digital items online, this unprocessed content is akin to answering the user's call for bread by showing them a field of wheat. Above all, such an approach is unsustainable, when we define sustainability as directly linked to resilience, which in turn is linked to relevance. The obvious point is to get past the digitality of content and emphasise it's use instead (hence 'post-digital'), a strong commonality with issues reported in web archiving, described in my last post.

In closing, some key point were presented:

• User facility and agency: a link was made to the exponential rise in gaming culture, which appeals to people's propensity to analyse large amounts of information and integrate that into the world. Facility is the competence to do so, also proving oneself to be adept technologically; agency is basically the expectation that one will be able to do these things. Facility and agency are essentially removed in the manner that cultural heritage content is usually presented - in disempowering users by removing this agency, the natural conclusion for many is to observe irrelevance in such institutions. We therefore need to articulate the value of curatorship to people who lead very different lives, and there is a balance to be found here between that and the more traditional mediated experience.
• The role of (digital) preservation: Preservation is a by-product of use: the cost of those operations and the value of content within the 'long tail' of digital content cannot be squared. Rather, survivability is linked directly to accessibility (certainly when applied to material that exists for access, the term 'preservation' can seem like a bit of a non sequitor). For physical material, there is too much content and not enough people to look after it - the notion of maintaining these physical collections has become an artifice. That model is no longer sustainable and we can't afford a 'collect and preserve' attitude any longer.
• Links to commercial content industries: When I asked whether the cultural heritage sector should build more bridges with the commercial content industries to move forward, the answer was an emphatic 'yes'. The idea that commercial and open ventures are irreconcilable is simply not true. Intelligent informed collaborations can happen that create content that is both commercially and freely available in its different aspects.  

The book is history

Today it was announced that Amazon's sales of e-books for Kindle in the US surpassed their sales in paper copies during the last three months of 2010. In socio-economic terms, the book (or more precisely, paper) is now largely obsolete as a format for information transfer. In society, information interactions of immediacy are conducted electronically (whether or not they are retained in hard copy for preservation purposes is another matter). In our economy, well, information interactions of immediacy are the economy.

In the final analysis, a paper document as a format for information transfer is analogous to any other largely obsolete format, such as vinyl records, or the cassette tape. Vinyl, in particular, has a unique quality to be sure, and can arguably enhance the listening experience. Similarly, reading a paper document is often far more comfortable for many. But this isn't the point. If you hear a new song you enjoy these days, you're unlikely to hit the record shops, much less purchase a vinyl record - you'll probably search YouTube and, if you like it, download the track in one way or another to a digital device. Even from the angle of comfort or nostalgia, Amazon's example proves that attitudes are changing.

Going back to the point on preservation: where a retroactive decision is made to preserve a document, common sense still indicates that this will need to be hard copy; the digital preservation challenges of storage, migration, emulation &c. have yet to become either simple or reliable. This is why the book, or paper, is literally history - it's a tool for engaging with the past, and a critical one, but no longer common currency for an information of immediacy. The book as a social and economic force has had its day.

Despite the fact that I invest time in exploring digital technologies, it is difficult to keep pace. I've just noticed that, in the few years between my current degree and the last, hard copy submissions of coursework are no longer accepted (at least at my university). In prioritising traditional models in the information sciences, this could have a detrimental impact on an institution's capacity to deliver information, turning what purport to be centres of current knowledge into museums very quickly indeed.

I suspect that the principal reason why some still give books so much currency in a digital world is because they've had such an unusually long run of dominance as a format. Even before the codex, there was the scroll and the bamboo fragment, and a clear chain of technological development can be traced from antiquity. But an appreciation of books for their own sake is not something that many people in the world have the time or money to share in. While digital technologies carry the potential for a digital divide to further separate develop and developing economies, or even citizens within a single country, there's also the huge potential to leap-frog dated communications technologies and create education initiatives, in particular, that could never have been possible before. More on that later.

The future of digital memory

Here's a sobering bellwether for the state of our immersion in the digital realm, recently pointed out to me by a colleague who's been engaged with the issue for some time: what do we want to happen to our digital legacy after we die? Almost all of us have one, given the extent to which we rely, in one way or another, on digital and online content, so should we care about providing our nearest and dearest with what amounts to a 'digital will'? For some of the questions this raises, you can see Dave Thompson's fascinating FAQ on digital wills here. Undoubtedly, this generation represents a watershed for future memory and history. Given the pace of things, we may well be around long enough to experience its impact.

A recent article by the BBC alludes to the fact that many of us probably wouldn't want our digital lives to be shared out - we might well be more inclined to erase our data than to leave a digital will. Despite the very real consequences of an individual's online actions (think about legal action relating to Twitter feeds, amongst other things), the medium retains the suggestion of anonymity, informality and, consequently, greater personal freedom, but is it something that we would wish to represent our memory?

Of course, in the UK, society itself is online (e-government, e-science, e-learning &c.) so where does this leave the future of our collective memory and the history of our times? The question is so large that I'm going to keep it rhetorical, but I'm particularly interested in how this also feeds into issues surrounding digital preservation in the cultural and public sectors. Some of these have been raised within a recent Discover Magazine blog article discussing a publication examining the long-term storage of e-services in instances where there is a legal obligation to retain the information for a very long time (100 years, in the case of some e-government data). It presents the thesis that there is too much data, and most of it is not safe in the long-term - why not use analogue storage methods in conjunction with digital media and get the best of both worlds?

Perhaps the solution in this context is to save digital data onto lots of microfilm as the authors suggest, but it highlights the fact that the digital drive has never been coupled with sustainability. In memory institutions, like libraries and museums, the move towards digital is mostly extremely expensive, and represents a major investment, despite the risks. Digital content represents one of the best leverage tools available to cultural heritage institutions at present by prioritising user access, which equates to institutional relevance and compatibility with current information demands. Sustainability is really a bonus that everyone wants to achieve, planning as best they can, but long-term storage is indeed a mighty complex problem and a conversation that will endure.

JPEG2000: the solution to mass digitisation?

A number of libraries have begun major digitisation projects using JPEG2000 images. Why is this of interest? It's a question that Simon Tanner, from King's College, tackled at the opening of today's JPEG2000 seminar at the Wellcome Library. His short answer was, bluntly, that cultural heritage institutions are seeing the JPEG2000 format as increasingly attractive for mass digitisation because they can afford it; essentially, it's the only reason the format is considered.

This was borne out in subsequent presentations - that you can do more with less money - but there are other reasons that JPEG2000 can seem enticing. Basically, the cost savings are based on smaller file sizes - the Wellcome Library reported a 89% reduction in file size after compression before loss of 'visual' resolution in comparison to TIFF format for their needs. A smaller file size also means faster processing - high definition, zoomable images of large maps or entire newspapers, visually indiscernible to uncompressed TIFFS, are displayed in real time and rapidly integrate with other image software - two notable projects were the National Library of Norway's digitisation programme powered by Geneza, and the Old Maps Online and Georeferencer projects. Each library that has chosen to commit to JPEG2000 is therefore principally concerned with access: new online collections where more material is delivered faster.

Another notable thread to the disussion was the relative ambiguity of the format's preservation credentials. Richard Clark, the UK head of delegation to JPEG, queried why the digital preservation community hadn't been more involved in feeding back to the developers (compared to the commercial sector, notably the film and security industries). I suspect that communication will be on the rise, as it was noted today that future migrations of JPEG2000 images may result in the loss of ICC colour profiles. This, coupled with concerns about failing image resolution down the road, makes for some pretty fundamental preservation problems.

As observed by Johan van der Knijff of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, just because JPEG2000 has been taken up by major institutions doesn't mean that the format is tried and tested in the long term context of digitisation. If anyone still thinks that digitisation is going to save the world's collections, this is some of the best evidence I've seen so far that this is a fantasy - a piece of paper, properly stored, will always outlast a digital file. So why bother? There is a balance between long-term preservation and access here, and while you making every effort to keep the stuff as long as possible (saving you the need, at least, to re-scan), these are programmes driven by access. While a secondary outcome may be the relief of pressure on your physical collections, digitisation projects largely reflect the new order of information retrieval.

Why have digital asset management?

I have a philosophy that you should always ask yourself why you're doing something when you do it (and preferably before), and keep on asking that question. For that reason, I wanted to backtrack and apply that to my new discipline, and to this blog. It will probably form a core stream of my writing here, tackling the 'what', 'why' and 'how' of DAM. A number of groups have described the key components in the operation of a DAM system, but I want to start by looking at the reasons for its being in the first place.

Briefly: the 'what'. It is probably the 'asset' within DAM that is most ambiguous, yet defines the discipline itself. My overriding sense of the term is that here assets are leverage. They are kept as a means to some conceptual end (as digital data at the logical level is never an end in itself) - looking at it in its broadest sense, that end could simply be that, in one way or another, someone is willing to invest their time in these assets, which is the key commodity in a digital economy. Any digital file needs to be worthy of an investment of time (that is, also, attention), otherwise it is not an asset.

In one example, digital records held by a business for legal reasons may never be seen, but have the potential for leverage in the eyes of the law. In another example, a university library's forward-thinking digital mission may capture a wider audience's attention and justify it's very existence to university administration, the leverage here serving to attract funding to ensure it's survival as a relevant institution. It could also be said that a business might potentially survive or collapse on the basis of its legal records.

All of this goes some way towards answering the 'why' of DAM, but this can clearly depend to a large extent on the sector within which one is operating a DAM system, as in the two examples above. At this stage I would like to look for some aspects of DAM that serve as the lowest common denominator in justifying its purpose. I believe that these are the access, efficiency and preservation of digital assets. These form the roots that then branch out into various manifestations of detail in different sectors.

1. Access: DAM allows for the dissemination of digital information to those who require it. There is no asset without access, and this involves the understanding and application of metadata and ontologies, which form a bridge between access and efficiency.


2. Efficiency: As well as optimising access, metadata and ontologies enhance suitability and reliability of information. Access needs to be rapid and fit for use to make digital information viable. This efficiency is the essence of the 'e' in e-learning, e-science &c. which in fact stands for enhanced - properly managed, digital information can undoubtedly enhance knowledge transfer.
   

3. Preservation: Data needs to remain compatible and often interoperable between systems for effective use and optimised access. In most cases, it also needs to meet these criteria of use and access for extended periods of time. DAM systems can deliver this and avoid the need for costly digital archaeology, or total data loss, in the future.

Some definitions, and distinctions

Very quickly the need has become apparent to take a first stab at some definitions of the terminology already peppering this blog. What, for example, is 'preservation'? This word alone, when used across different disciplines, has the capacity to induce instant confusion.

One example of this from my own experience is the digitisation process. This is a moment where hard-copy meets digital and two theories of preservation collide - one is 'traditional' preservation, the other is digital preservation. While the preservation of born-digital items seems inherently understood from its context (digital items need digital preservation), the problem comes when you apply the word (preservation) to collections of digitised materials themselves - is hard-copy 'preserved' by being digitised?

While the digital image data files of these digitised collections have entered the domain of preservation in the digital sense and become 'digital assets', the original hard-copy has not in fact been preserved as an object in its own right. Take the extreme example of digitised documents being discarded in the name of economy of space, only to find that the digital image data files have become corrupt, or the system required to interpret them has become obsolete. All evidence of the documents are then lost - they were never preserved. It seems important to make this distinction.

Certainly, stories of the ephemeral nature of digital assets are legion, and businesses are still forced to retain hard-copy. The problem of the previous example is as old as sound recording technology, well summarised in a Wired article on Digital Archaeology from 1993, when CD-ROM was becoming firmly established. Nevertheless, my impression at this early stage is that the digital asset manager is primarily concerned with born-digital material since, once a digital data file is created from hard-copy, that is the creation of a new asset (in addition to the original hard-copy) that enters the domain of digital preservation, just like any born-digital asset.

Once a digital data file is created, the term 'preservation' can then be comfortably applied within this understood digital context. For what that might then mean, I've just been introduced to OAIS (Open Archival Information System) designed by the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems after the data migration problems that befell NASA after the Apollo Program (also mentioned in the Wired article). OAIS identifies two divisions of digital preservation: the preservation of digital data as it is migrated across media and across formats; and the preservation of access services to digital data as technology changes and software is ported (adapted) to new systems, including emulation. A pithy explanation of OAIS itself can be found here.