Implementing an Open Jurisdictional Digital Repository - the STORS Project

This article discusses the development and implementation of an open jurisdictional repository for published electronic material by the State Library of Tasmania, Australia. This repository is called the Stable Tasmanian Open Repository Service (STORS). It operates within the legal deposit provisions of the Tasmanian legislation and includes electronic documents published in Tasmania by government, commercial publishers and individuals. STORS is based on a publisher self-contribution model for content acquisition. The project has focused on the need to ensure easy and reliable contribution of content by publishers, with the provision of additional benefits to encourage use. STORS has been developed in a modular and extensible way, and will be supplemented over time to improve discovery, interoperability and preservation outcomes. Introduction The State Library of Tasmania is the legal deposit library for all books published in the state of Tasmania, Australia. This legal requirement, enshrined most recently in the Libraries Act 1984 (Tasmania. Department of Premier and Cabinet 2003), defines books in a broad and format-neutral way, so as to include material in electronic and digital formats. Following their introduction, electronic publications in physical formats (floppy disks, CDs, etc.) have been accepted and treated the same as print publications. Since 1998 the State Library has operated a web publishing archive, whereby State Library staff have used the powers of the Libraries Act 1984 to select and download Tasmanian websites, modify them to operate independently on a State Library server, and provide access to those preserved web sites through a public web service entitled Our Digital Island. This experience led the State Library to realise that a special repository for electronic documents would eventually be needed. 1 State Library of Tasmania, . 2 Our Digital Island, . In 2000 the State Library of Tasmania was charged with the responsibility to provide the state government services portal, Service Tasmania Online. This meant that the State Library had increased responsibilities to ensure access to online government information for the Tasmanian community, including long-term access to government electronic publications. The State Library subsequently undertook a project to define and establish a document repository and archive service. Special project funds were provided by Service Tasmania in late 2002 to develop this service which was in due course titled the Stable Tasmanian Open Repository Service, or STORS. Current status of digital repositories A review of the literature indicated to the State Library that the need for a digital archive for published electronic documents has been widely acknowledged, and the number of such archives has begun to grow (DSpace, ePrints, etc.). There are two basic reasons for this growth. Firstly, there is the recognition that as electronic documents disappear from their original file systems or web locations, specific archives are needed to ensure retention and access. Secondly, a web archive or repository can make documents placed in them openly available that might otherwise be locked up by copyright and other publishing restrictions. For these reasons, various types of institutions have established archives that provide enduring storage, either for the needs of that institution, or for sectors (e.g., education), or target groups (e.g., academic authors). Such archives can work in isolation or network and overlap in coverage. The variety of repository implementations (including those for learning objects in the education sector) suggested to the State Library that most of the groundwork existed for the technical implementation of a basic repository. Following on from this, the State Library set out to develop the business rules and processes for governing a unique repository that would be both jurisdictional (covering an entire Australian state) and open (accepting contributions over the web from all types of publishers) in scope. Throughout this process, the State Library has been guided by the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) reference model (Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems 2002) and continues to use this model to ensure sufficient data and process granularity to enable developmental growth, particularly to ensure future functional interoperability and archival extensibility. 3 Service Tasmania Online, . 4 STORS, . The STORS jurisdictional model self-contribution From the beginning, the State Library saw STORS as a dynamic and developmental service that would continue to grow in functionality over time. The Library's first objective, however, was to develop a service that enabled the easy ingestion of document-like objects, in commonly used electronic formats, from the widest possible range of publishers in Tasmania. To meet this objective the State Library sought to develop a model that relied on publishers as the primary agents in the contribution process. Experience from Our Digital Island had demonstrated that the Library could not afford to provide the internal processes or personnel to identify and capture appropriate Tasmanian content for the repository. The self-contribution repository model meant that STORS would have to cope with contributors from a variety of backgrounds, and who would have varying levels of skill and commitment. In other words, the submission process would have to be as simple as possible. Content scope The scope established for STORS was that it should accept all Tasmanian content produced or otherwise published in Tasmania, including content from government, community, commercial, and personal sectors. Published is here taken to mean that the document has been made publicly available, without access restrictions, over the Internet from a server located in Tasmania. Format scope STORS was developed to focus initially on the acquisition of document-like objects with inherent web-browser compatibility. Basically, STORS content should be accessible using a normal web browser and common, freely available plug-ins. As the phrase document-like objects is difficult to define succinctly, STORS attempts to focus on discrete items that have a distinct conceptual and physical boundary, rather than open-ended and dynamic entities such as web sites and databases. The State Library decided to defer the development of STORS as a repository for entire web sites, for complex multi-part programmes, or for data sets that require specialist underlying software or applications to operate. Such content is so inherently difficult to manage that the State Library will need to rely on the wider preservation community to develop solutions that it can in turn adopt. Encouraging publisher participation The State Library felt that it was important to develop STORS in such a way as to provide a number of positive business benefits that would encourage publisher participation (and ensure wider content acquisition). Immediate access to an enduring URL The State Library decided to provide publishers with the ability to use STORS as a location for current documents as well as archived material. In this way STORS would acquire documents early in the publishing cycle. To do this STORS needed to provide an immediate and enduring URL that allowed publishers to use and access their items from the time of contribution. In OAIS terms, STORS aimed to encourage Tasmanian publishers to play both Producer and Consumer roles. Such a service would remove the need for publishers to store and manage publications on their own file systems, and the enduring nature of the URL would also eliminate the need for publishers to maintain web links or references. This URL is in the format STORS domain/STORS unique ID (e.g., http://www.stors.tas.gov.au/au-7-0010-00001). If STORS was to assume a role in the publishing cycle, it also had to facilitate the external discovery of deposited documents. For this reason STORS selectively allows contributed items to be indexed by web harvesters and search engines. Document contextual relationships It is extremely important that the end user understand the context, accuracy and currency of a document when it is delivered externally to the repository application. The presentation of the document within a normal web browser is neutral and uninformative, and the user will not know whether the document is still current and reliable, or inaccurate and out of date. STORS solves this problem through the use of contextual metadata. The contribution process allows the publisher to indicate whether or not there is a date by which the resource will become invalid or outdated, or whether there are earlier or subsequent versions. STORS uses this contextual metadata and a resolver service to provide an intermediary screen whenever a resource is requested. This screen informs the user of the context of the requested document, informs the user if the document has become outdated, and provides links to superseding or superseded versions within the repository. Documents are always accessed via this intermediary screen to avoid confusion over context. Any external requests for direct access to the document are intercepted by the resolver service and sent back to the intermediary page. Figure 2 STORS intermediary screen