DCC cluster summary
From DigiRepWiki
Digital Curation Centre
Digital curation is all about maintaining and adding value to a trusted body of digital information for current and future use. Working with other practitioners, the Digital Curation Centre will support UK institutions that store, manage and preserve these data to help ensure their enhancement and their continuing long-term use. The purpose of our centre is to provide a central focus for research and development into curation issues and to cultivate expertise and promote good practice, nationally and internationally, for the management of all research outputs in digital format.
The DCC is currently involved in two pilot projects that are closely related to digital repositories and long-term preservation. The first project will look into aspects of audit and certification relating to digital repositories. Seeking to complement the existing international efforts in this area the DCC will work with the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) to undertake a pilot audit of the digital repository at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in the Netherlands in late April 2006. This exercise represents the third in a series of pilot audits that aims to assess the viability of the RLG/NARA Certification Task Force Audit Checklist for Certifying Digital Repositories. Additional independent pilot audits will be undertaken by the DCC in 2006 within the UK, with the results informing subsequent work and contributing to the accumulated understanding.
The second pilot project is the DCC LOCKSS Technical Support Service (LTSS), funded as part of the JISC/CURL LOCKSS Pilot Programme. The Pilot Programme aims to raise awareness of LOCKSS in the UK and will monitor, assess, and support the use of LOCKSS technology for e-journal archiving and preservation. Twenty-four universities from across the UK have successfully bid to participate in this pilot and have very recently had LOCKSS boxes installed at their institutions. In addition to gathering valuable community feedback on the usability and functionality of LOCKSS, the Technical Support Service will also provide both technical and non-technical support to the UK LOCKSS community, including first line support and development of publisher specific plug-ins, as well as training and awareness raising events.
Questions:
- How can we best identify, promote and collaborate in the research and development activity being carried out by other JISC programme projects and other projects (e.g., in the data and eScience communities, JISC core middleware projects)?
- Should the various JISC-funded projects start to look into assigning 'bricks' (from the JISC/DEST e-Framework model) to the various services we are developing?
- Is there a need for an audit and certification framework for digital repositories in the UK? If so, what characteristics would an accredited certifying body be required to have?
