Book review

Published in: Journal of the Society of Archivists, Vol. 24, No. 2, 2003, pp. 243-244:

Digital preservation and metadata: history, theory, practice
Susan S. Lazinger, 2001
Englewood, Colorado: Libraries Unlimited
xxii + 359 pp, £46.50
ISBN 1 56308 777 4

In this recent book, Susan Lazinger of the School of Library, Archive and Information Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has attempted to provide a general introduction to digital preservation and related issues. The target is a fast moving one, so the author acknowledges that her book can only represent a "snapshot, a picture of the theories on, history of, and projects in digital preservation at the beginning of the twenty-first century" (p. xxi).

The book is divided into three main parts. The opening five chapters provide a general introduction to digital preservation including brief overviews of the output of selected initiatives and projects. The first chapter explains why digital preservation is such an important issue, noting not only the technical challenges of media longevity and software/hardware obsolescence but also how the malleability of digital information has made it difficult for us to have confidence in its continued authenticity. The four chapters that follow address how to choose what information should be preserved, who should be responsible, how it can be done and how much it might cost.

The next two chapters turn their attention to the topic of metadata. In these, Lazinger does not specifically concentrate on what is now known as preservation metadata, but provides a general introduction to metadata and interoperability, illustrated with detailed descriptions of selected initiatives and standards. Within the context of the book, these chapters seem a little disjointed from the main focus on preservation, but are justified as introducing "the models, formats, and standards necessary for the interoperability essential if we are to preserve our digital information" (p. 139). The first of these chapters introduce some of the initiatives that make up the 'alphabet soup' of the metadata world while the second outlines selected metadata frameworks, including the Universal Preservation Format (UPF) and the Resource Description Framework (RDF).

The third part of the book is an annotated list of data archives and other projects compiled by Helen Tibbo of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While the usefulness of this list will decline over time, it may help to provide future scholars with a snapshot of selected activity as of 2001.

Digital preservation is gradually being seen as one of the key challenges of the twenty-first century. For example, one could cite the recent approval by the US Congress of the $100 million National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) or the establishment of the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) in the UK. In this context, there is an undoubted need for a good introductory text on digital preservation. Lazinger's book is timely but suffers from a number of drawbacks.

The biggest of these is the lack of any significant analysis. Lazinger's style is to summarise long chunks of other documents and to include long quotations. While not wrong in itself, this leads to occasional repetition and a general acceptance of initiatives on their own terms. Sometimes this can be confusing. For example, chapter 2 outlines a number of different typologies of electronic publications and selection criteria without really explaining the different assumptions that underlie them. It would have been more useful to have briefly indicated what types of typologies or selection criteria exist, explain the contexts in which they had been developed, and then propose some kind of synthesis. In addition, the book sometimes loses focus on its main subject. For example, the chapter on preservation costs spends as much time discussing the costs of creating digital content (i.e. digitisation) as in considering the less well known financial implications of long-term preservation.

Even more confusing are the last sections of each chapter, entitled "summary and recent developments." While the chapter summaries themselves are useful (and often represent the only real attempt at synthesis), the latter part of these sections often introduce detailed information on projects and initiatives not identified earlier. For example, the chapter on syntactic and semantic interoperability introduces the concept of Dublin Core qualifiers, two educational metadata initiatives, the National Library of Australia's preservation metadata schema and many other things. It would have been more logical to integrate these parts within the main body of the text.

One final weakness of the book is that despite its apparent comprehensiveness, it omits to mention a number of relevant initiatives. So, while the book has a major focus on metadata, the only mention of the influential Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS) is as part of a quotation describing the National Library of Australia's preservation metadata schema. There is also no real consideration of recordkeeping metadata developments. Indeed, apart from brief mentions of the activities of the US National Archives and Records Administration and the InterPARES project and an outline of the Encoded Archival Description (EAD), there is little in Lazinger's book to indicate the important part that the archives and records professions have played in developing the current digital preservation agenda. Many of the concepts here considered integral to digital preservation - e.g., authenticity, provenance, the life cycle of information, the importance of working with creators, etc. - have long been part of the discourse of archivists.

Having said all this, it would be unfair to be totally negative about this book. It is written in an engaging style and Lazinger has performed a useful service in collecting a vast amount of information together in one relatively compact volume. The comprehensive index also means that it is easy for readers to find information on the topics that they need. For these reasons, it will be of use to library school students and others who need a relatively short introduction to digital preservation issues and/or metadata developments.

Michael Day
UKOLN, University of Bath