Museums+Tech 2022: Turning it off and on again. Somaya Langley Friday November 11 2022

1. DIGITAL IS OUR EVERYDAY REALITY,
DIGITAL PRESERVATION SHOULD BE TOO
Museums+Tech 2022
Turning it off and on again: Museums and the ‘new’ normal
SOMAYA LANGLEY
DIGITAL PRESERVATION MANAGER
11/11/2022
@criticalsenses

2. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY
Redfern 2019. Somaya Langley. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

3. Locating the ‘too hard’ baskets
Receive basket, pneumatic
communications equipment. c1958.
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
https://collection.sciencemuseum
group.org.uk/objects/co8413429
Revising assumptions
Factory Records Vinyl Records and
Cassette Tapes. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
https://collection.sciencemuseum
group.org.uk/objects/co8421139
Three-Legged Stool for Digital
Preservation
Kenney, A. & McGovern, N. 2003.
https://www.dpworkshop.org/dpm
-eng/conclusion.html

4. Audiovisual collections
Set of 20 interviews on audio
cassettes 'Pioneers of Computing’.
1976. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
https://collection.sciencemuseum
group.org.uk/documents/aa11008
2041/
Object collections (digital)
Binder of floppy disks, from Apricot
portable computer. 1984. CC BY-NC-
SA 4.0
https://collection.sciencemuseum
group.org.uk/objects/co8669773/
Digital Corporate Records
Wonderlab AR. 2022.
https://learning.sciencemuseumgr
oup.org.uk/resources/wonderlab-
ar/

5. @TheMERL
The Museum of English Rural
Life
@JoeDuilio @JShahryar
The Absolute Unit Twitter Meme. 2018. https://twitter.com/themerl/status/983341970318938112
Rees, A. J., 2021. Remixing Museology: An approach to collecting social media in museums.
https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/29542/

6. DIGITAL CONTENT ASSESSMENT TOOL
Complexity Ranking
(‘simpler’ to complex)
Relative Complexity
Category
Class of Digital Content Preferred File Formats Standards & Technical Specifications
1 Simpler Digitised Still Image (2D) TIFF
- Metamorfoze Preservation Imaging Guidelines / Image Quality, version 1.0 (2012)
- TBC - Photo Studio Photography & Digital Imaging Standards - review by Photography Manager
2 Simpler Born-Digital Photographs TIFF, DNG DRAFT in development - by SMG Digital Preservation Manager (2022)
3 Simpler Research Publications PDF, PDF/A, DOCX etc.
4 Simpler Oral History WAV, BWF
-IASA-TC 04
- PCM Wave Format (WAV) – minimum 16bit/44.1kHz
- Broadcast Wave Format (BWF) - minimum 24bit/48kHz, 24/96 best practice
5 Simpler Digitised Audio BWF, WAV As above
6 Simpler Born-Digital Audio WAV, BWF As above
7 Simpler Digital Ephemera (e.g., flyers etc.) PDF, TIFF, JPEG, PNG etc.
8 Simpler Theses (cotutelle, IRO partner etc.) PDF, TIFF, JPEG, PNG etc.
- Born-Digital Theses: TBC - PDF/A-1 - TBC, various flavours (esp. if embedded audio or video)
- Digitised Theses: PDf/A-1b
9 Moderate Electronic Publications (Library) ePUB, PDF, PDF/A, iBooks etc.
10 Moderate Digitised Moving Image (film and video) DPX, FFV1/MKV, J2K/MXF OP1a
11 Challenging Born-Digital Video
- IASA-TC 07 in development
- Uncompressed Audio Video Interleave (AVI) – uncompressed
- TBC - Access Copy: MPEG-4 (MP4) - CODEC: ProRes, H.264, AVC, audio: stereo AAC
- TBC - Production Master: MOV (MOV) - CODEC: ProRes, H.264, AVC, audio: stereo AAC
- Preservation Master: FFV1/MKV, JPEG 2000 Op1a/MXF, DPX
12 Challenging Research Data CSV, variety of file formats
13 Challenging Born-Digital Archives* Variety of file formats
14 Challenging Email Variety of file formats
15 Challenging Digital Maps
16 Challenging Web Archives WARC
17 Difficult 3D (image)
18 Difficult Time-Based Media
19 Difficult Social Media WARC, JSON, JPEG, PNG, CSV, XML
20 Difficult Born-Digital Objects** Variety of file formats
21 Difficult Wearable, smart or non-intelligent devices
22 Difficult Born-Digital Immersive Interactives Variety of file formats
23 Difficult Streaming Audiovisual Broadcast
24 Very Difficult Big-Data
25 Very Difficult Software
26 Very Difficult Video Games
27 Very Difficult AR/VR/MR/XR

7. LESSONS LEARNT
• Begin with Capability and Maturity Modelling
• Approach digital preservation holistically – it’s more
than a technical problem
• Invest effort in organisational infrastructure
• Develop guidelines and tools on an ‘as needs’ basis
• Colleagues will ‘learn by doing’ (play a supporting role)
• Normalise ‘it depends’ (there’s no ‘one right answer’)
• Direct line of communication to leadership
• Transitioning from Projects to Programme to BAU is
tough
• This a decade-long organisational change
Trumpet Player Partner Robot, with multiple additional parts. 2004-2005. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co8461252

8. CONTACT
somaya.langley@sciencemuseum.ac.uk
@criticalsenses