I am currently pursuing a PhD in Technical Communication and Rhetoric. What in the world does that mean?
Technical communication is the umbrella under which technical writing falls. Technical writing itself fills a very recent gap that opened during the mid- to late-1800s; this gap grew even larger with rapid technological innovations. These new technologies led to a need for people to be able to communicate how to work with them. Engineers aren't writers; writers aren't engineers. There needed to be some sort of bridge-people who could liaison between technology, engineers' information, and the regular person.
Technical communication became a full-blown field of study with the availability of graduate degrees, with the inclusion of critical theory into the discipline, and with the growing need for research rigor. (How, for instance, do I know that my documentation about the development of a server is functional without testing it on other people? That would require research.)
With the .net boom, technical communication has enjoyed a heyday--so many people who use computers and the Internet need to know how to do specific functions. So much information can be tracked about what people are doing as they interface with technology. These are things that a technical communicator can study, interpret, and convey.
Metadata. Where does metadata fit in?
At the moment, the field of technical communication conflates social tagging with metadata. I have read a lot about technical communicators' conception of metadata, and I've discussed it with other technical communicators, and everyone thinks that social tagging=metadata. They don't realize a few things.
Controlled vocabulary.
Authority.
The role of metadata in digital preservation.
Digital preservation. (Where will all this stuff we've written be in 10 years? 20 years?)
Right now, I plan to put these pieces together so that disciplines besides Library Science can understand how metadata, digital preservation, Web surfing, and social inter-function.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Saturday, September 18, 2010
What is digital preservation?
Question: What is digital preservation?
A) Digital preservation is the process by which a bitstream (file, piece of data, etc.) is saved for prosperity by backing it up onto tape media and placing that tape into a basement.
B) Digital preservation is a series of steps and checks to ensure that descriptive information (metadata anyone?) accompanies a bitstream, and that the master file is continually verified to ensure integrity into an approximate number of years until integrity changes, and that access version and master file are completely separate.
C) Digital preservation thinks toward how a file can be maintained for the next 100-200 years.
Well, of course the longest answer is the correct answer. I'm researching curation micro-services right now, and if you're curious about a much more precise definition of digital preservation, Dorothea Salo and her gang at Sciencetopia know so much more about it than I do--and I think they're much more professional in how they define it.
Either way, the idea is that digital preservation isn't just "let's back up a file." While yes, file backup is the most basic level of preservation--the first step--it is by no means the last. The entire goal of digital preservation is to create a series of steps that commit, dedicate some of your resources for a certain amount of time, toward the goal of ensuring file (and all accompanying information about that file) integrity until a new and improved (!) technology comes out. Sometimes one can say, "I will do this for one year until I know more about this process," and sometimes one can say, "I commit myself and my available resources--personnel, hardware, software environment--for at least 5 years because I know this is the most applicable method for my organization."
There are many librarians out there who can express all of this in much better language than I can, and they can also explain to you what things like reference requests for master files means, can define the repository concept for you, and can elaborate on technical metadata versus descriptive metadata. I am not going to explain checksum scripting or the issues with tying information together into a database.
Digital preservation is a commitment to a series of steps. This is all I want to get across here. Perhaps later, if you, dear reader, are very, very good, I'll discuss the role of metadata in digital preservation.
A) Digital preservation is the process by which a bitstream (file, piece of data, etc.) is saved for prosperity by backing it up onto tape media and placing that tape into a basement.
B) Digital preservation is a series of steps and checks to ensure that descriptive information (metadata anyone?) accompanies a bitstream, and that the master file is continually verified to ensure integrity into an approximate number of years until integrity changes, and that access version and master file are completely separate.
C) Digital preservation thinks toward how a file can be maintained for the next 100-200 years.
Well, of course the longest answer is the correct answer. I'm researching curation micro-services right now, and if you're curious about a much more precise definition of digital preservation, Dorothea Salo and her gang at Sciencetopia know so much more about it than I do--and I think they're much more professional in how they define it.
Either way, the idea is that digital preservation isn't just "let's back up a file." While yes, file backup is the most basic level of preservation--the first step--it is by no means the last. The entire goal of digital preservation is to create a series of steps that commit, dedicate some of your resources for a certain amount of time, toward the goal of ensuring file (and all accompanying information about that file) integrity until a new and improved (!) technology comes out. Sometimes one can say, "I will do this for one year until I know more about this process," and sometimes one can say, "I commit myself and my available resources--personnel, hardware, software environment--for at least 5 years because I know this is the most applicable method for my organization."
There are many librarians out there who can express all of this in much better language than I can, and they can also explain to you what things like reference requests for master files means, can define the repository concept for you, and can elaborate on technical metadata versus descriptive metadata. I am not going to explain checksum scripting or the issues with tying information together into a database.
Digital preservation is a commitment to a series of steps. This is all I want to get across here. Perhaps later, if you, dear reader, are very, very good, I'll discuss the role of metadata in digital preservation.
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