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What can libraries do for
researchers?
Michael Day
Digital Preservation Manager
The British Library
EThOS Multimedia and non-text PhD workshop, The British Library,
London, 29 September 2016

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What can libraries do for researchers?
• Outline
– Digital preservation challenges
– Digital preservation at the British Library
– Web archives
– Thesis workflows
– Roles for libraries
• HEIs
• Others

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Digital preservation challenges
• A many layered challenge:
– Obsolescence
• Hardware, peripherals, storage devices, software, etc.
– Human factors
• Lack of documentation / metadata, dead links, complex
objects, software interdependencies, semantic drift
– Sustainability
• Solutions
– Active management of content (e.g., standardisation, secure
bit-level storage, monitoring of technologies, preservation
planning)

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Digital preservation challenges
[Example courtesy of Paul Wheatley, Digital Preservation Coalition]

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Digital preservation at the British Library

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Digital preservation at the British Library

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Digital preservation at the British Library
Flashback Project (2015-16)

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Web archives
• Websites continuously get restructured and/or disappear
– Studies of links from the research literature, monitoring “link
rot” and website changes
• Web archives
– Actively collecting Websites since the mid-1990s
– Internet Archive, content available via Wayback Machine
– UK Web Archive
• Open UK Web Archive – selective
• Legal Deposit UK Web Archive - domain harvesting, since
2013, >60 Tb each), limited access)
– Technological limitations to capture tools

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Thesis workflows (past)
Source: Victoria Catterson / Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/cowlet/354911838
License: CC Attribution 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode

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Thesis workflows (current and future)
• A much more diverse set of outputs
– Data, Software, Games, Audio, Multimedia, Websites, etc.
– Random file formats
• Some securely “linked to” the thesis, some not:
– Third-party services
– Standalone websites
• Current situation
– Essentially replicates the traditional workflow, substituting or
adding the deposit of PDF (and metadata)
– Growing provision for other file types, but generally treated
as exceptions (files are retained as submitted)

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Thesis workflows (current and future)
• Roles for libraries:
– Need for libraries to be more pro-active in supporting PhD
students, through whole process (not just involved in final
submission)
– Wider support for the research role of university (including
PhDs), part of emerging Research Data Management
activities

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Roles for libraries
• HEIs
– Advocacy and policy change
• Changing guidance for the “deposit” of eTheses
• Better understanding of institutional responsibilities for
etheses and supplementary content
• More direct engagement with the research process itself

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Roles for libraries
• HEIs
– Infrastructures
• Sharing
• Storage
– Supporting the management of content during the
research phase
» Backup procedures, shared storage, etc.
– Supporting the longevity of content now and into the
future
» Requirements here are less well understood
– Do institutional repositories have a role?

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Roles for libraries
• HEIs
– Training and skills development
• Needs to be focused at PhD level
• Data management plans
• Working with Doctoral Training Centres?
– Guidance
• Examples from ETDPlus project, e.g. on storage (backup,
etc.) metadata, file formats:
https://educopia.org/research/grants/etdplus
– But … what skills will libraries need to do this effectively?

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Roles for libraries
• National level
– Managing identifier infrastructures (e.g. DOIs, ORCID)
– Management of supplementary content
• Subject-based services, e.g. UK Data Archive, NERC data
centres
• National data services, e.g. DANS (Netherlands), ANDS
(Australia)
• Others, e.g. Figshare, Dryad, GitHub, etc.

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Roles for libraries
• National level
– Web archives
• UK Web Archive
• ArchiveIt (Internet Archive)
– The British Library
• Support for research embedded in current strategy,
“Living Knowledge”
• Sharing professional expertise, e.g. involvement in Digital
Preservation Coalition, International Internet Preservation
Consortium, Open Preservation Foundation
• Other services?
– EThOS

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Thank you
Source Alastair Dunning / Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/alastair-dunning/8042902341
License: Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/legalcode