Survey the 'landscape' of preservation registries, and how they are used

[anjackson]

The general idea of providing some kind of point-in-time survey of 'registry' information sources that are in active use in digital preservation.

As raised in the 2024-05-23 PRONOM call, our lists and registries are biased towards the western world and en-gb/en-us resources. It would be good to push back against that somewhat.

If all agree, this can be integrated into the DigiPres Awesome List. Perhaps as well as mapped out somehow.

• Media

  • 17

  • https://obsoletemedia.org/
  • https://knowyourcarrier.com/
  • https://hub.catalogit.app/7049/folder/4b278cb0-81de-11ee-9db7-c15820171dfa
• Formats
  • PRONOM
    • https://preservica.com/resources/blogs-and-news/updating-preservica-following-a-pronom-update
    • https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/aboutapps/pronom/release-notes.xml
    • https://github.com/digital-preservation/PRONOM_Research
    • https://exponentialdecay.co.uk/blog/pronom-release-statistics/
  • LoC
  • That Rosetta one? See https://github.com/digipres/sentinel/issues/20
  • NARA?
  • BL https://wiki.dpconline.org/index.php?title=File_Formats_Assessments
  • Macintosh Type/Creator codes? See https://github.com/digipres/sentinel/issues/21
  • AmigoOS https://wiki.amigaos.net/wiki/IFF_FORM_and_Chunk_Registry
  • RISC OS, now https://www.riscosopen.org/content/allocate
    • https://www.riscos.info/index.php/RISC_OS_Filename_Translation#Files_on_ADFS_filing_systems_under_Linux
    • https://web.archive.org/web/20231128231104/http://www.riscos.info/index.php/RISC_OS_Filename_Translation
  • Whatever this is: https://github.com/iphelix/seat/blob/master/databases/filetype.gs
• Software
  • https://archive.softwareheritage.org/api/
• Tools & Actions
  • Look at the sustainability of COPTR. #26
  • Look at SSH Open Marketplace: https://marketplace.sshopencloud.eu/
  • Look at history of e.g. DIRT. See also https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_DH_Tool_Registry and https://osdfir.blogspot.com/2022/11/transitioning-forensics-wiki-to-github.html and https://code4lib.org/ and e.g. from ZOMBSE
  • Look at Awesome Lists.
  • Look at https://amiaopensource.github.io/ffmprovisr/
  • Learn from https://jamstack.org/ ? e.g.
  • Learn from https://bits.ashleyblewer.com/blog/2017/08/09/collection-management-system-collection/
  • Preservation Actions Registry https://parcore.org/ Preservica Instance https://demo.preservica.com/Registry/par/documentation.html
  • NARA https://www.archives.gov/preservation/digital-preservation/linked-data
• Workflows
  • Community Owned Workflows https://coptr.digipres.org/index.php/Workflow:Community_Owned_Workflows
  • TNA Digital Preservation Workflows https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/archives-sector/projects-and-programmes/plugged-in-powered-up/digital-preservation-workflows/
  • https://github.com/amiaopensource/open-workflows
• Practice
  • DigiPres Q&A:
    • URL: https://qanda.digipres.org/ and see https://qanda.digipres.org/about
    • We also have the old Stack Overflow exports a.k.a. ZOMBSE: https://anjackson.github.io/zombse/
    • Import old Q&As into GitHub Q&A, but remove the names?
    • Sessions from the [#BitCuratorForum](https://digipres.club/tags/BitCuratorForum) is this QandA table. via https://digipres.club/@Thorsted/112140099103202938
  • iPres conference proceedings and related material
  • Zenodo DigiPres Community List: https://zenodo.org/communities/digital-preservation/
  • Zenodo PREMIS Collection: https://zenodo.org/communities/premis/
  • Ethan's Zotero collection? https://www.zotero.org/ethan-gates/collections/ERZIYJ3T
  • Mailing lists?
  • Blogs?
  • DPC Handbook & Toolkits https://www.dpconline.org/digipres
  • Policies: https://github.com/digipres/policies
  • https://www.dpoe.network/digital-preservation-resource-guide/
  • https://academydigitalpreservationforum.org/
• Indexes:
  • Awesome Lists URL: https://github.com/digipres/awesome-digital-preservation See also... Web Archiving Awesome List: https://github.com/iipc/awesome-web-archiving
  • The digipres.org homepage
  • The Format Aggregator

Also look at checking if these things are in web archives? Submitting these things to web archives? Using the Awesome List itself as a source for the Practice Index?

And...

Would it help to make a visual 'maps' of registries? e.g. laid out using...

• a simple drawing?
• a Wardley map?
• a manually constructed Obsidian canvas, published via e.g. https://www.sharecanvas.io/?
• a Miro/Figma/Slides collaborative document?
• a network graph? Node size proportional to format count? Edge 'strength' proportional to overlap?
• a Venn diagram overlapping by shared features? (avoiding the problems with multiset overlaps)
• an UpSet plot of extensions or features?
• a chord or Sankey plot of links or overlaps between entities?

Or just laid out by hand, as here.

[anjackson]

Experimenting with using a Google Sheet to gather the data...

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1q1qaR3XoZzNT5KBSTMsP5Wm05Q6KtFpfNVug7OJLLIM/edit#gid=0

[anjackson]

Would a 'registry of bad practices' make any sense? Or just be needlessly divisive?

[ross-spencer]

Would a 'registry of bad practices' make any sense? Or just be needlessly divisive?

Divisive, overreach, gate-keeping? Take your pick.

[anjackson]

Hah, yeah. The idea was suggested so I thought I'd record it. But I think it's likely better to focus on the positive.