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