The Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (APSR)

1. The Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (APSR) CAUL Meeting 2004/1 University of New South Wales 1 April 2004

2. Roadmap • Partners • Extent and Intent • Activity and Operational Structures • Digital Sustainability Program (NLA) • Practices and Testbeds Program (ANU, USyd, UQ) • National Services Program • International Linkages Program • External Involvement

3. Partners • The Australian National University (Lead institution) • The National Library of Australia • The University of Queensland • The University of Sydney • Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing

4. Extent and Intent In responding to the call to develop national research infrastructure through the creation of a broad repository-based architecture, the APSR proposal had at its core • an overall focus on critical issues of access continuity to and sustainability of digital collections • a determination to build on a base of demonstrators for digital continuity and sustainability embedded in developmental repository facilities within partner institutions • an aspiration to contribute to national strength by encouraging development of skills and expertise and providing coordination throughout the sector via a platform of national services and international linkages

5. An open partnership both in its manner of working and its ultimate manifestation within a national centre • predicated on a belief that - • the higher education sector needs catalysts to encourage and enable institutions to take action based on best practices that will ensure continuity of access to key information resources over time

6. Such resources not simply text-centric in nature. Real challenge lies in coping with huge volume of research data and resources in varying formats and configurations emerging from the eScience and eHumanities movements cf. Tony Hey and Anne Trefethen ‘The data deluge: an eScience perspective’ (2003) Tony Hey ‘Why engage in e-science?’ (2004) Within APSR, role of APAC to carry these eResearch links, beyond their direct involvement in University of Sydney testbed project

7. Activity Structure

8. Operational Structure

9. Digital Sustainability (Core Program) • Led by NLA, program will support and work with demonstrator or testbed projects and also feed directly into National Services and International Linkages programs (notably in its links with the recently established Digital Curation Centre in Edinburgh) • Primary objective to provide mechanisms and expertise to ensure digital information resources remain available findable usable trustworthy understandable re-usable ‘for as long as they are needed’ • Seeks to develop national centre of excellence, providing such services as best practice documentation, software frameworks and archives, generic tools, format registries, planning strategies, and technology watch services

10. Practices and Testbeds Program • (1) • Implementation of Repository Technology in a Standards Framework • (ANU) • Objectives • Develop an open source repository infrastructure that addresses the needs of Australian universities for the management of digital assets • Develop mechanisms for building effective partnerships with academic community for the management of their digital assets • Participate in federation services with APSR partners and other SII projects

11. Key Tasks • Develop repository system based on needs analysis from a broad set of representative collections • Become major contributor to DSpace open source development • Contribute to international standards and best practice for the management of digital repositories • Populate ANU repository • Develop policy framework for partnerships with academic staff • Cooperate with other testbed projects to meet the objectives of the Digital Sustainability program • Evaluate success of software and policy development

12. ANU DSpace now live <dspace.anu.edu.au> First collections images from ArtServe, ANU Archives and Noel Butlin Archives Centre Collections from other ANU communities programmed or being considered for incorporation include • ANU EPrints (documents also being contributed to Google/DSpace/OCLC scholarly search demonstrator) • ANU E Press (to be launched on 18 May) <epress.anu.edu.au> • Anthology of Australian Music (audio collection) • Various art image databases • Coombs photography demonstrator

17. Practices and Testbeds Program • (2) • Sustainability and Interoperability in a Complex Distributed Environment • (University of Sydney) • Objectives • Develop a sustainable model for large complex object repositories within a distributed research environment • Document a set of supporting protocols and standards • Develop appropriate enabling middleware and tools

18. Key Tasks • Establish a project methodology for the testbed facilities • Develop protocols within the common XML environment of the testbed facilities • Cooperate with other testbed projects and the MAMS project to meet the objectives of the Digital Sustainability program • Scope prototype demonstrator projects (cultural, health, historical) • Develop and implement appropriate middleware and tools to enable demonstrators • Develop and implement testing and evaluation methods • Undertake evaluation of protocols within partner and other facilities nationally and internationally

19. ‘complex distributed environment’ Testbed project will work with both local and international partners SETIS (Scholarly Electronic Text and Image Service) with links to Michigan, Oxford and Virginia PARADISEC (Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures) with links to AILLA (Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America) and DELAMAN (Digital Endangered Languages and Musics Archive Network) ACL (Archaeological Computing Laboratory)/SSIU (Spatial Science Innovation Unit)/Time Map collaboration with links to Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (UCLA), Unesco, MacquarieNet

20. Practices and Testbeds Program • (3) • eScholarship Australia • (University of Queensland) • Objectives • Develop an integrated entry point to a range of repositories of research output • Encourage better reporting of academic research outputs • Facilitate access to information about Australian research

21. Key Tasks • Identify existing repositories at UQ to be used in project • Investigate and adopt appropriate standards to be used, with emphasis on open standards • Test a range of harvesting protocols, including OAI-PMH • Examine subject mapping techniques to ensure metadata conforms to appropriate thesaurus descriptors. (Existing institutional subject classification schemes will be mapped to the Australian Standard Research Classification. Where metadata lack appropriate thesaurus descriptors, automatic and semi- automatic subject mapping techniques will be used.) • Investigate and implement mechanisms to identify, capture, organise and manage non-text, non-OAI compliant resources • Cooperate with other testbed projects to meet the objectives of the Digital Sustainability program • Extend demonstrator application to other institutions

22. National Services Program • Objective • Provide following services to national higher education and research sector • Technical advisory services • Knowledge transfer and educational services • Consultation and collaboration services • Timeframe • 2005-2006

23. International Linkages Program • Objectives • Participate in and contribute to the development of international standards applicable to digital access and sustainability • Participate in selected international programs in the digital access and sustainability area • Maintain a technology watching brief across a wide range of international programs in the digital access and sustainability area • Timeframe • 2005-2006 • Some initial steps in 2004 (participation in first DSpace User Group meeting, Boston, 10-11 March, and linkage with JISC/eSCP Digital Curation Centre, University of Edinburgh)

24. External Involvement • Potential for involvement in APSR by others than immediate project partners • National Services Program (starting in 2005) • Occasional open workshops and forums • Thought being given to establishing an inner mailing/email list for those who register interest in receiving news of APSR progress and developments

25. Also potential opportunity for others to participate as project partners (specified in both original proposal and agreement between ANU and existing project partners) • Such participation would require • Strategic commitment to the development of institutional digital repositories • Significant implementation program involving repository technology and a collection program focused on research materials having sector-wide relevance • Commitment to sector-wide cooperation in the development of institutional repositories • Commitment to APSR objectives and willingness to contribute to APSR processes • Acceptance that partner responsibilities include participation in APSR core activities such as standards setting, evaluation and adoption, expertise network, skills pool, international linkages and benchmarking New partners would bring own resources to APSR There would be no access to DEST funding unless additional monies were granted

26. Thank you Vic Elliott 1 April 2004