Publications beginning with 'E'

This report describes the research conducted on emerging characterisation techniques. It details the most important research challenges, possible solutions investigated so far, and future directions of research. [PDF, 715KB]

The preservation or conservation of digital art confronts us with a range of challenges, eclipsing many of the difficulties posed by more mainstream digital resources like documents and images. Preservation of art may itself be an impossible goal; instead, one might realistically aim only to create and collate sufficient documentation capable of conveying meaning and impact to a future audience, with perhaps one eye on its recreation where necessary at a later date. The Planets project is creating vocabularies and frameworks to describe the attributes that give a digital artwork its value. The latest developments are described in this report. [PDF, 374KB]

This presentation was given by Jeffrey van der Hoeven at the iPres 2007 conference which took place on October 11-12 2007 in Beijing, China.

The presentation describes the pros and cons of emulation, it outlines the project behind the modular emulator, Dioscuri, and presents the next steps in emulation and Planets. [PDF, 974KB]

Abstract: "In recent years a lot of research has been undertaken to ascertain the most suitable preservation approach. For a long time migration was seen as the only viable approach, whereas emulation was looked upon with scepticism due to its technical complexity and initial costs. In 2004, the National Library of the Netherlands (Koninklijke Bibliotheek) and the Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands acknowledged the need for emulation, especially for rendering complex digital objects without affecting their authenticity and integrity. A project was started to investigate the feasibility of emulation by developing and testing an emulator designed for digital preservation purposes. In July 2007 this project ended and delivered a durable x86 component-based computer emulator: Dioscuri, the first modular emulator for digital preservation."

The paper was published in The International Journal of Digital Curation, Issue 2, Volume 2, 2007.
More info

In recent years a lot of research has been undertaken to ascertain the most suitable preservation approach. For a long time migration was seen as the only viable approach, whereas emulation was looked upon with scepticism due to its technical complexity and initial costs. In 2004, the National Library of the Netherlands (Koninklijke Bibliotheek) and the Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands acknowledged the need for emulation, especially for rendering complex digital objects without affecting their authenticity and integrity. A project was started to investigate the feasibility of emulation by developing and testing an emulator designed for digital preservation purposes. In July 2007 this project ended and delivered a durable x86 component-based computer emulator: Dioscuri, the first modular emulator for digital preservation.

This paper was published in The International Journal of Digital Curation, Issue 2, Volume 2, 2007, pp. 123-132 [PDF, 363KB]

Emulation used as a long-term preservation strategy offers the potential to keep digital objects in their original condition and experience them within their original computer environment. However, having just an emulator in place is not enough. To apply emulation as a fully fledged strategy, an automated and user-friendly approach is required. This cannot be done without knowledge and contextual information of the original software. This paper combines the existing concept of a view path, which captures the contextual information of software, together with new insights into improving the concept with extra metadata. It provides regularly updated instructions for archival management to preserve and access its artefacts. The view-path model requires extensions to the metadata set of the primary object of interest and depends on additionally stored secondary objects for environment recreation like applications or operating systems. This article also addresses a strategy of rendering digital objects by running emulation processes remotely. The advantage of this strategy is that it improves user convenience while maximizing emulation capability.

The paper was presented by Dirk von Suchodoletz (University of Freiburg) at iPRES 2008 in September 2008 in London, and was published in IJDC, Issue 3, vol. 4, 2009. [PDF, 458KB]

This document considers the activities of the DT6 Training Work Package throughout the project. It evaluates the achievements of each of the tasks and looks at the long term impact of the training activities on delegates’ daily work and their interest in the Planets solution. It concludes with a consideration of how far overall objectives have been met and a list of recommendations for any future Planets training programmes. [PDF, 394KB]

This presentation was given by Christoph Becker, Vienna University of Technology, at the Tools & Trends conference at Koninklijke Bibliotheek (National Library of the Netherlands) on 1-2 November 2007.

The presentation discusses the methodology for preservation strategies, including how to define requirements, and it looks at the preservation plannning tool, Plato, which is developed within the framework of Planets. [PDF, 1661KB]

This report gives an overview of the Planets Functional Model and relates it to the Planets deliverables. It also gives a set of recommendations for the OAIS model. [PDF, 4504KB]