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As an outsider sometimes it feels that reading/hearing about digital preservation research is a bit like reading an article on particle physics.  In fact sometimes lectures on particle physics might be clearer.  The number of acronyms, the amount of jargon per project and also the amount of assumed knowledge can, at times make our subject inpenetrable to many, not to mention boring.

So with this in mind I steeled myself for a few days at the PLANETS workshop in London recently.   At the DPTP we talk a lot about OAIS and I was keen to hear about PLANETS’  ’suite’ of tools developed with the OAIS model and digital preservation in mind. The OAIS model implies a number of flexible preservation workflows so I was looking forward to hearing about what the  PLANETS team had done.

Ross King’s  wonderfully clear session really drew the crowd in.  He set out the business case for digital preservation, provided explanations of the technical elements that make up digital preservation, the technical problems behind preservation; the options available and the decisions that need to be taken. While not taking away from the sheer volume of ’stuff’ being created and which will be created as well as the challenges, it was a very motivational session. Next Clive Billeness drew our attention to the fact that risk is the only real motivating factor when it comes to getting the powers that be in organisations to take digital preaservation seriously. He says that we need to talk to financial planners, CEOs in terms of risk, using the language of risk. Companies are now being asked to keep a ‘living will’ so that they can garantee that they can operate in case of a disaster, ensuring that records needed to operate are kept in a manner which can ensure operations.

So what are these PLANETS tools? I am not going to cover them all but Hannes Kulovits introduced us to PLATO,  PLANETS preservation planning tool.  Preservation planning for digital preservation includes preservation policies, legal obligations, organisational and technical constraints, user requirements and preservation goals. It also describes the preservation context, ‘the evaluated alternative preservation strategies and the resulting decision for one strategy, including the rationale of the decision.’ During the workshop we looked in depth at how to decide on preservation strategies and factors which influence decision making.  Input is needed from a wide range of persons, depending on the institutional context and the collection. PLANETS have also pinned down some essential characteristics for digital objects with regard to their preservation.

I was a bit narked that I didn’t get to actually play with it on my laptop there and then but I have done so since the workshop.  How long this planning process takes place is another issue. This was a bit of a drop for us all, yes planning takes time but that much time?

A quick survey of the crowd by me during and after revealed that some people felt that while they enjoyed initial content they felt that the workshop  wasn’t for them, too technical or too highbrow. I consider myself to be a low to middle brow kind of girl (dp-wise I hasten to add) so was suprised by this as I felt that it was one the clearest events I had been to on digital preservation.  I felt this response was a real pity, perhaps there needs to be more interaction with the groups attending these workshops (one remaining) to gauge receptivity.  I struggle with projects who really cannot communicate their products. I didn’t feel this case here. The Planets Framework is really good and may need definining but I really enjoyed it and look forward to next developments.

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