Registry of Digital Masters
Introduction
The DLF takes a growing interest in helping to define and
facilitate the development of key "infrastructural services" that
are required by digital libraries but beyond the capacity of any
one of them to develop. This page introduces work being conducted
by the DLF defining the need for and the requirements of a
service that registers the existence of persistent digitally
reformatted and born digital monograph and serial
publications.
It also points to additional materials including a general case for the development of a registry,
a functional requirement for the
service as it pertains to digitally reformatted materials, a
functional requirement for the
service as it pertains to born digital materials, a report on a meeting that was convened by the DLF
in April 2001 to launch discussion about a registry service, and
a report of a meeting held with
OCLC in November 2001 to discuss implementation of the a
service.
Although the registry service is not intended to be exclusive
(it records information about the large and valuable legacy of
digitized and born digital monographs and serials) its existence
provides an opportunity to identify and build consensus around
minimum characteristics that might be expected generally of a
faithful digital master. Accordingly, this document points to
related work
conducted by the DLF to define those minimum characteristics.
Background
An increasing number of libraries and commercial entities are
involved in converting existing paper-based monographs and
serials to digital form. Unlike the special collections materials
that have been the focus of digital conversion in many libraries,
monographs and serials are commonly duplicated in many different
institutions. This presents both an opportunity and a threat. The
opportunity is for coordination between institutions, with the
efforts of each contributing to a larger shared but distributed
collection. The threat is that resources will be wasted in the
repeated digitization of the same material. A key requirement to
realizing the opportunity and avoiding the threat is a mechanism
for sharing information in a coherent fashion between
institutions about what has been digitized; that is, the creation
of a registry of digitized materials. (It should be noted that a
related effort is underway to define a registry for recording
long-term responsibility for the storage and preservation of
paper originals. Such a resource will allow an institution to
decide whether to preserve the original source documents for
which digital surrogates exist.)
The Registry provides a place for institutions that have
created (or are otherwise responsible for) digitized versions of
traditional printed monographs and serials to record:
- what specific items have been (or are about to be)
digitized;
- where they can be accessed;
- the specifications followed in digitization.
There are two specific types of use the Registry must
support:
- Staff engaged in digitizing efforts should be able to
discover whether a specific item has already been digitized, and
if so whether the digitization has been done at an adequate level
such that another digital copy is not required.
- In the spirit of many contemporary metadata efforts, the data
contributed to the Registry should be available for large-scale
extraction and reuse. One obvious type of reuse that can be
envisioned is the ability of a library to extract catalog records
for materials digitized elsewhere for inclusion in its own local
catalog. Another would be the gathering of metadata about digital
materials in a specific topical area for inclusion in a portal or
subject catalog.
Some of the benefits that may flow from the registry are
documented in More Access at Less Cost.
The Case for a Digital Registry.
Scope
Initially the Registry was intended for information about
faithful reproductions of monographs and serials originally
published in paper format. ("Faithful reproductions" are copies
intended to preserve the original appearance of published
materials, and must include digital images of all pages in the
original.) The scope of the initiative was later extended to
include born digital monographs and serials.
Where digitally reformatted materials are concerned,
reproductions should be of meaningful bibliographic entities as
traditionally described in library catalogs: entire volumes of a
monograph, whole issues of journals (not single articles). The
intent is to record only entities traditionally described in MARC
bibliographic and holdings records. By recording materials in the
Registry, institutions are signaling the intent to preserve and
maintain the accessibility of the described materials over an
extended timeframe (decades or centuries, not years). This
implies that materials are digitized carefully, complying with
established standards and best practices, and that they are
stored in professionally managed systems. When registered,
materials should already be digitized, or be in an active queue
for digitization. A use copy of any material registered must be
available on-line (either for free or through some normal
business arrangement such as subscription or a charge-per-use
basis) to the general public.
The Registry is not exclusive. It is able to record
information about the large and valuable legacy of digitally
reformatted and born digital monographs and serials. It is also
able to encourage data creators and data users to determine
independently and for their own purposes, what constitutes a
faithful reproduction. The existence and use of a Registry
provides an opportunity to identify and build consensus around
minimum characteristics that might be expected generally of
digital monograph and serial content. Characteristics of
digitally reformatted material are documented in the
benchmark now
endorsed by the DLF.
Functionality
To achieve the benefits that are documented here, the registry
supports a number of specific uses. It has the ability to record
certain kinds of data about registered objects (e.g.
bibliographic and holdings data), make recorded information
available to users in particular ways, and support appropriate
data input and data maintenance. To assist in the development of
a viable registry, minimum or base level functional requirements
statements have been prepared - one for digitally reformatted monographs and serials
and one for born digital monographs and
serials. Both derive from an early
functional requirements statement developed exclusively for
digitally reformatted materials.
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