Discusses analogies between the rise of the electric power grid and the Internet. Describes storage capacity issues and requirements for digital repositories. Reviews different repository platforms specific to archival and digital collection management. Has a really cool picture of Burden's Wheel.

1. Digital Infrastructure
From Storage to Content Management Systems
By Noreen Whysel
LIS 665: Projects in Digital Archives
September 25, 2013

2. Burden’s Wheel
Source: Carr, N. (2008). Burden’s Wheel. In Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google (pp. 9-
24). New York: W. W. Norton.
 Burden’s Wheel is a story of technology obsolescence
 Centralizing electrical power:
 creates economies of scale
 leads to obsolescence of other technologies
 Users slowly rely on the technology change
 Those who don’t embrace the change fall behind
 What happened with electricity then is happening with
computing today

3. Burden’s Wheel
Source: Carr, N. (2008). Burden’s Wheel. In Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google (pp. 9-
24). New York: W. W. Norton.
l
“We may soon come to discover that what we believe to be the
enduring fundamentals of our society are in fact only temporary
structures, as easily abandoned as Henry Burdon’s wheel.”
-Carr, N. (2008)

4. RAID: Redundant Array of
Independent Disks
 RAID Improves speed, data
reliability or both.
 Store a lot of data
 Data is always available
 Backup in case of a
failed drive
 Maximize storage and
efficiency
 Striping Data: Divide data
and send a bit to each
drive
 RAID 1: Redundancy
Data saved to second disk
 RAID 5: Parity
Parts of data is saved
across several disk
 RAID 6: Two sets of Parity
 RAID 5-6 sacrifices some
speed
Source: Simply Storage: RAID. Web. Retrieved from
http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/d/videos~en/Documents~simply-storage-raid.aspx.aspx

5. Assessing Repository Models
Source: Rieger, O. Y. (2007). Select for Success: Key Principles in Assessing Repository Models. D-Lib
Magazine, 13(7/8). Retrieved fromhttp://www.dlib.org/dlib/july07/rieger/07rieger.html

6. What a Repository Needs to Do
 Enable digital asset management
 Offer preservation services
 Provide institutional visibility
through access to collective
intellectual work
 Support learning, teaching, and
research
 Facilitate discovery of content
 Enable re-use and re-purposing of
content
 Support archival business
requirements
 Offer alternative channels in
support of scholarly
communication
 Organize information to allow
effective content management
and access
 Provide access to outcomes of
publicly funded research initiatives
 Strengthen partnership between
content creators/providers and
content managers
Source: Rieger, O. Y. (2007). Select for Success: Key Principles in Assessing Repository Models. D-Lib
Magazine, 13(7/8). Retrieved fromhttp://www.dlib.org/dlib/july07/rieger/07rieger.html

7. Selecting a Repository Model
1. Identify Key Stakeholders
2. Conduct a Needs Assessment Analysis
3. Identify Resource Requirements
4. Understand the Existing Human Landscape
Source: Rieger, O. Y. (2007). Select for Success: Key Principles in Assessing Repository Models. D-Lib
Magazine, 13(7/8). Retrieved fromhttp://www.dlib.org/dlib/july07/rieger/07rieger.html

8. Selecting a Repository Model
Source: Rieger, O. Y. (2007). Select for Success: Key Principles in Assessing Repository Models. D-Lib
Magazine, 13(7/8). Retrieved fromhttp://www.dlib.org/dlib/july07/rieger/07rieger.html

9. Implementing EAD & Archivists’ Toolkit
 Advantages of Encoded Archival Description (EAD)
 Allows for interoperability
 Encourages good descriptive habits
 Standardizes presentation
 Disadvantages of EAD
 Lack of trained staff
 Not cost effective
Source: Schwartz, M. &KitchinTilman, R. (2012). Embracing Archivists’ Toolkit to Implement
EAD. Proceedings of MARAC 2012, Oct. 27 2012, Richmond, VA.

10. Archival Management Systems
 Archivists’ Toolkit – http://www.archiviststoolkit.org
 Archon - http://www.archon.org/
 *Archives Space - http://www.archivesspace.org/
 Omeka - http://omeka.org/
 CollectiveAccess – http://collectiveaccess.org
 Archivematica- https://www.archivematica.org
 Duraspace- http://duraspace.org/ (DSpace, Fedora)
 Greenstone – http://greenstone.org
 ContentDM – http://www.contentdm.org/
* Archives Space is the current Society of American Archivists standard.
Archival
Management
Systems
DigitalCollection
Management
Systems

11. Content Management Systems
 WordPress – plugins for repositories and collections
management
 Drupal – Collective Access, CONTENTdm integration
 Google Docs - Spreadsheets

12. Archivists’ Toolkit & Archon
Source: Archivists’ Toolkit & Archon will soon be superceded by ArchivesSpace. Web.
http://www.archiviststoolkit.org/content/archivists-toolkit-archon-will-soon-be-superseded-
archivesspace

13. Archives Space
 What is ArchivesSpace?
 “The New York University Libraries, UC San Diego Libraries,
and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Libraries are
partnering to develop a next-generation archives
management application that will incorporate the best
features of Archivist’s Toolkit (AT) and Archon.
 With funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the
project team is developing a technical
platform, governance structure, and service model that will
provide the archival community with a cutting-edge,
extensible, and sustainable platform for describing analog
and born-digital archival materials.”
Source: About. Archives Space. http://www.archivesspace.org/about/

14. Source: Burden Wheel.png. Wikipedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Burden_Wheel.png