DPE: DRAMBORA Toolkit and Supporting Tutorials

DCC/DPE DRAMBORA Toolkit and Supporting Tutorials

The Digital Curation Centre (DCC) and DigitalPreservationEurope (DPE) are delighted to announce the release of the Digital Repository Audit Method Based on Risk Assessment (DRAMBORA) toolkit and supporting tutorials. This toolkit facilitates internal audit by providing repository administrators with a means to assess their capabilities, identify their weaknesses, and recognise their strengths. It complements other emerging work on attributes and criteria for Trustworthy Digital Repositories. DRAMBORA can be utilised by a broad range of digital repositories, including the majority of current instances whose mandates do not yet include responsibility for long-term digital preservation.

The development of this toolkit follows a concentrated period of repository pilot audits undertaken by the DCC, conducted at a diverse range of organisations including national libraries, scientific data centres and cultural and heritage data archives. We recognise that digital repositories are still in their infancy and, accordingly, this model will respond to meet the changing needs caused by the rapidly developing landscape.

This self-assessment toolkit was developed collaboratively by the DCC (funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee and the Core e-Science Programme run by EPSRC on behalf of all the Research Councils in the UK) and DPE (co-funded by the European Commission). These two initiatives will continue to work together to test and refine the toolkit, to manage the online tool , and to foster its widest possible take-up within the United Kingdom, Europe and broader international contexts.

Chris Rusbridge, Director of the DCC, said "Digital Curation embraces the whole life cycle of scientific data, and uses databases and repositories with widely different scales and mandates. This approach could have benefits across the whole spectrum. I welcome this toolkit, emerging from a combination of theoretical and practical underpinning, involving collaborations between different parts of the DCC and many international bodies and individuals, which has such strong potential for improving the management of scientific data."

Seamus Ross, in his capacity as Director of DigitalPreservationEurope, noted that, "Digital repositories provide a fundamental mechanism for contemporary society to communicate our cultural and scientific heritage with the future. If they are to do this well then they must closely monitor what they do and how they do it. This toolkit is designed to help them to meet these needs."

While formal certification is still some time away, the DCC and DPE are confident that there are many benefits to be gained by undertaking the process of self-auditing. To support the take-up of the DRAMBORA self-assessment toolkit in the UK, Europe, and beyond the DCC in cooperation with DPE are pleased to announce three tutorials to introduce the DRAMBORA toolkit.

Supporting Tutorials

DCC Tutorial: Building Trust in Digital Repositories - Using the DRAMBORA Toolkit
London
26 April 2007 (from 11.00am-4.00pm)

DPE Tutorial: Building Trust in Digital Repositories - Using the DRAMBORA Toolkit
National Archives of the Netherlands
The Hague, The Netherlands
3 May 2007 (from 11.00am-4.00pm)

DCC at IS&T Archiving Conference: Building Trust in Digital Repositories - Using the DRAMBORA Toolkit
IS&T Archiving Conference
Virginia, USA
21 May 2007 (from 8.00am-12.00pm)
http://www.imaging.org/conferences/archiving2007/tutorials.cfm

These practical tutorials open with a contextual overview of the need for an evidence-based audit of digital repositories and describe the results of the DCC pilot audits to date as well as lessons. The tutorials will then move on to demonstrate how institutions can make use of the DRAMBORA toolkit to design, develop, evaluate, and/or refine new or existing trusted digital repository systems and workflows. This will involve a walkthrough of the audit process with practical examples based on the pilot audits.

Participants will be encouraged to draw upon and share their own experiences during this discussion. Participants will receive a hard copy of the DRAMBORA toolkit and related documentation to take away with them so they can begin to assess their own repositories and workflows or start developing a repository system.

Benefits of Participation

This course will enable the attendee to:

Comprehend the concepts of trust with regards to digital repositories
Recognize the need for evidence-based evaluation for building trust in digital repositories
Understand how the DRAMBORA toolkit can be used to help design and develop systems and workflows that can help build trusted digital repositories
Obtain skills needed to undertake a thorough assessment of digital repositories using the DRAMBORA toolkit
Appreciate the range of staff and skill-sets required to implement and sustain a trusted digital repository
Contribute to the refining of the audit toolkit

Intended Audience

This tutorial will be of interest to anyone involved in funding, supporting, developing, implementing, managing, and/or using digital repositories.

For more information on the toolkit and the tutorials, please see:
http://www.dcc.ac.uk/
http://digitalpreservationeurope.eu
http://www.repositoryaudit.eu

Chris Rusbridge
DCC Director

Professor Seamus Ross
HATII Director at University of Glasgow,
DPE Principal Director, and DCC Associate Director

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Notes for Editors

The JISC-funded Digital Curation Centre (DCC) provides a focus on research into digital curation expertise and best practice for the storage, management and preservation of digital information to enable its use and re-use over time. The project represents a collaboration between the University of Edinburgh, the University of Glasgow through HATII, UKOLN at the University of Bath, and the Council of the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC) . The DCC relies heavily on active participation and feedback from all stakeholder communities. The DCC is not itself a data repository. Rather, based on insight from a vibrant research programme that addresses wider issues of data curation and long-term preservation, it has developed and offers programmes of outreach and practical services to assist those who face digital curation challenges. It also seeks to complement and contribute towards the efforts of related organisations, rather than duplicate services.

DigitalPreservationEurope (DPE) is a three-year project (2006-2009), co-funded by the European Commission (IST-2006-034762), and comprising nine partner organisations from eight European countries. It fosters collaboration and synergies between existing national initiatives across the European Research Area to address the need to improve coordination, cooperation and consistency in current activities to secure effective preservation and curation of digital materials. For more information see the DigitalPreservationEurope website.

Instructors

Andrew McHugh, advisory services manager for the DCC since 2004, leads a world-class team of digital curation practitioners in offering leading-edge expertise and insight in a range of issues. His most recent work at the DCC has involved leading its work in trusted repository Audit and Certification. McHugh also lectures on multimedia systems and design on the MSc in Information Technology run by the Computing Science Department at Glasgow.
Seamus Ross, professor of Humanities Informatics and Digital Curation and director of Humanities Computing and Information Management at the University of Glasgow, runs HATII (Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute, of which he is the founding director. He is an associate director of the DCC, a co-principal investigator in the DELOS Digital Libraries Network of Excellence, and principal director of DPE.
Raivo Ruusalepp is currently involved in the audit and certification of digital repositories work of the DPE project. He is employed at the National Archives of Netherlands and the Estonian Business Archives. Ruusalepp has an MA in computing applications for history from University of London and has worked with digital archives and electronic records management for more than ten years.