Metadata

CURL Exemplars in Digital Archives (Cedars)

Introduction:

The Cedars (CURL Exemplars in Digital Archives) project was a UK digital preservation project initially funded by JISC through the Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib). The project ran for four years from mid-1998 to the end of March 2002. The project was under the overall direction of the Consortium of University Research Libraries (CURL) and lead sites were the universities of Cambridge, Leeds and Oxford. The project aimed to promote awareness of the importance of digital preservation, to produce strategic frameworks for digital collection management policies and to promote methods appropriate for long-term preservation.

More detailed information about Cedars related activities was available from the Cedars project pages based at the University of Leeds:

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/cedars/ [2005 UK Web Archive version]

General project information about Cedars was available from the CURL Web site:

http://www.curl.ac.uk/projects/cedars.html [2004 Internet Archive version]

See also Michael Day's bibliography on the Preservation of electronic information. [Periodically updated between 1996 and 2000]

UKOLN Activities:

UKOLN's involvement in Cedars was mostly concerned with preservation metadata. As part of the Cedars project, Michael Day produced in August 1998 Metadata for Preservation, a preliminary review of metadata models and formats that were considered to relate in some way to digital preservation. He also contributed to the publication in March 2000 of: Metadata For digital preservation, the Cedars outline metadata specification. This was one of several early attempts to define the metadata necessary to support the long-term preservation of digital objects, work which eventually coalesced into the PREMIS Data Dictionary standard.

While working on the Cedars project, Michael Day was an invited member of the OCLC/RLG Preservation Metadata Working Group (2001-2001). This group synthesised the findings of several early preservation metadata initiatives (including the Cedars specification) and published a white paper entitled: Preservation metadata for digital objects: a review of the state of the art (January 2001). Another working group (also sponsored by OCLC and RLG) took this work forward in developing the original version of the PREMIS Data Dictionary (2005).

In March 2002, Michael Day produced the Cedars guide to preservation metadata, part of a series of guides published by the project.

Michael Day also published event reports of the Cedars conference "Preservation 2000" and (with Maggie Jones) the final Cedars Workshop, held in February 2002. Some of UKOLN's Cedars-related presentations and publications are listed below.

UKOLN staff that worked on Cedars:

Michael Day, Research Officer (1996-2008)

(Worked on the Cedars project, 1998-2002)
m.day@ukoln.ac.uk

Lorcan Dempsey, Director of UKOLN (1994-2000)

(Member of Cedars Advisory Board, 1998-2000)

Presentations and publications:

Selected Publications:

Michael Day, Digital preservation and long-term access to the content of electronic serials. In: Jones, W. (ed.), E-serials: publishers, libraries, users, and standards, 2nd ed. Binghamton, N.Y.: Haworth Information Press, 2003, pp. 167-195. Available: http://opus.bath.ac.uk/23585/

Michael Day, Cedars guide to preservation metadata. Leeds: Cedars Project, March 2002. Available: http://opus.bath.ac.uk/23594/

Michael Day, Metadata for digital preservation: a review of recent developments. In: P. Constantopoulos and I. T. Sølvberg, (eds.), Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries: 5th European Conference, ECDL 2001, Darmstadt, Germany, September 4-9, 2001, Proceedings, (Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2163), Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2001, pp. 161-172. Available: http://opus.bath.ac.uk/23596/

Michael Day, E-print services and long-term access to the record of scholarly and scientific research. Ariadne, No. 28, June 2001. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue28/metadata/

Michael Day, Resource discovery, interoperability and digital preservation: some aspects of current metadata research and development. VINE, No. 117, 2000, pp. 35-48. Available: http://opus.bath.ac.uk/23582/

Michael Day, Metadata for digital preservation: an update. Ariadne, No. 22, December 1999 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue22/metadata/

Michael Day, Issues and approaches to preservation metadata. In: Guidelines for digital imaging. London: National Preservation Office, 1999, pp. 73-84. Available: http://opus.bath.ac.uk/23708/

Michael Day, CEDARS: digital preservation and metadata. In: Sixth DELOS Workshop. Le Chesnay: ERCIM, 1998, pp. 53-58. Available: http://opus.bath.ac.uk/23583/

Michael Day, Online serials: preservation issues. The Serials Librarian, Vol. 33, No. 3/4, 1998, pp. 199-221. Reprinted in: Jones, W., (ed.), E-serials: publishers, libraries, users, and standards. Binghamton, N.Y.: Haworth Press, 1998, pp. 199-221.

Michael Day, Extending metadata for digital preservation. Ariadne (Web version), No. 9, May 1997. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue9/metadata/

Selected presentations:

Michael Day, Cedars work on metadata, Cedars Workshop, Manchester Conference Centre, UMIST, Manchester, UK, 25 February 2002.

Michael Day, UKOLN metadata projects: subject gateways and digital preservation metadata, International Confererence - Electronic Resources: Definition, Selection and Cataloguing, Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Roma, Rome, Italy, 27 November 2001. Draft text at: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/presentations/rome-2001/paper.html

Michael Day, Metadata for digital preservation: a review of recent developments, ECDL2001, 5th European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries, Darmstadt, Germany, 4-9 September 2001. Draft text at: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/presentations/ecdl2001-day/paper.html

Michael Day, Preservation metadata and the Cedars project, META-LIB-Workshop, Niedersächsischen Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen, Germany, 23 May 2000. http://www2.sub.uni-goettingen.de/metalib/day/ [2007 Internet Archive version]

Michael Day, Preservation metadata and the Cedars project, Metadata for long-term preservation in NEDLIB, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, France, 25 February 2000. http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/presentations/nedlib/

Michael Day, Metadata for preservation: the Cedars perspective, Third Metadata Workshop, Luxembourg, 12 April 1999. http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/presentations/metadata3/

Michael Day, Metadata for images, Challenge of Image Retrieval 1999, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, 26 February 1999. http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/presentations/cir99/

Michael Day, Issues and Approaches to Preservation Metadata, Joint RLG and NPO Preservation Conference: Guidelines for Digital Imaging, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK, 28-30 September 1998. http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/presentations/rlg-npo/

Michael Day, CEDARS: digital preservation and metadata, 6th DELOS Workshop, Tomar, Portugal, 18 June 1998. http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/presentations/delos6/

Event reports:

Michael Day, The final Cedars Workshop: a report from Manchester, UK. RLG DigiNews, Vol. 6, no. 2, 15 April 2002. http://www.rlg.org/preserv/diginews/diginews6-2.html#conference [2007 OCLC version]

Michael Day and Maggie Jones, Cedars Final Workshop, Manchester Conference Centre, UMIST, Manchester, 25-26 February 2002. Leeds: Cedars project, 22 April 2002. http://www.leeds.ac.uk/cedars/pubconf/umist/finalWorkshopRep.html [2005 UK Web Archive version]

Michael Day, Preservation 2000, report on the International Conference on the Preservation and Long Term Accessibility of Digital Materials, York, 7-8 December 2000. Ariadne, No. 26, January 2001. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue26/metadata/

Michael Day and Andy Stone, Report on the third Metadata Workshop, Luxembourg, 12 April 1999. Ariadne, No. 20, June 1999. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue20/metadata/

Michael Day and Neil Beagrie, Report on 6th DELOS Workshop, Tomar, Portugal, 17-19 June 1998. D-Lib Magazine, July/August 1998. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july98/07clips.html#DELOS
A more detailed report is available in: Ariadne (Web version), No. 16, July 1998. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue16/delos/

Michael Day, Report on the Working Meeting on Electronic Records Research, Pittsburgh, Pa., 29-31 May 1997. Ariadne (Web version), No. 10, July 1997. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue10/metadata/