MVP Accomplishments, as of July 2009

Engagement with Partners

•      We are in the middle of a process to re-engage with current partners in order to ensure that our current services were meeting their needs.  Made a few small changes to the services to enhance the utility for current partners.

•     Engaged new partners including the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive and the Office of Public Affairs.  Both customers are interested more (but not exclusively) in the Digital Asset Management capabilities of the Media Vault than they are in the long-term preservation capabilities.  This has necessitated some rethinking of the standard workflow.  The MVP team believes this may be a growth area and is actively engaging with these partners to develop a plan that works well.

Generaton 2 Platform Planning

•     After more than a year of running our current platform during the MVP POC project, it has become clear that we need to implement a platform that improves on our current Extensis Portfolio/Netpublish platform in the following ways:
- Is more scalable, requiring very little or no human intervention to provision new users of the service, and allowing the service to grow to hundreds or thousands of distinct customers, including individuals.
- Is designed for use at an enterprise scale, including capabilities such as integration with CalNet authentication/authorization, delegated administration and group management, etc.
-    Is based on open and fully documented standards for metadata storage and preservation
-    Is based on FLOSS software, that does not require an end user to purchase client software in order to take full advantage of the service.
-    More easily integrates with other services, such as ARTStor, bSpace, the Library, cloud-based services (e.g. Flickr, YouTube, Scribd, etc.), institutional and discipline-specific repositories, etc.

•    Developed a representation of the “Digital Scholarship Lifecycle,” defining the different phases of work that go into a piece of scholarship, and to discuss how the Media Vault can better support each of these phases.
•    Developed a literature review of current thinking about digital asset management and digital repository systems (see http://mvp-drm.berkeley.edu/wiki/Related_Literature_and_Other_Resources)

•    Developed use scenarios for the broad spectrum of potential users of the Media Vault service (see http://mvp-drm.berkeley.edu/wiki/Use_Case_Scenarios)
•    Initial exploration and investigation of platform and service possibilities, including the possibilities ranging from:
-    mashing together services from local and cloud providers to provide many or most of the necessary capabilities of an MVP system, to:
-    systems such as Nuxeo, Alfresco, Thalia, ePrints, dSpace, etc. which would be run and managed in-house.
We believe the final solution will likely be a blend or middle ground on this spectrum.

Staffing Changes
•    Hired Noah Wittman as Program Manager.
•    Added Ian Crew to the team on a permanent basis.  (He has been a part of the team on a temporary basis since October 2008.)  Ian is responsible for managing the running of the platform and services for the Media Vault.
•    Added Rick Jaffe to the team on a permanent basis.  Rick is currently participating in community and customer outreach, and in planning for the next-generation Media Vault platform



Internal Process Improvements
•    Created MVP Wiki for planning and project coordination.  See http://mvp.berkeley.edu/wiki
•    Did extensive work on project planning and deadline/milestone creation and description.
•    Implemented Footprints for issue tracking.



Technical Accomplishments
•    Implemented full monitoring of MVP services, which actively alert the team to issues with any of the services, and warn of potential issues before they affect service delivery.  This has resulted in significantly decreased downtime for the Media Vault service.
•    Implemented auditing of UC Backup backups, verifying that backups are complete and correct on an ongoing basis
•    Performed a successful recovery test of nearly 2TB of data from UC Backup.  All data was recovered successfully and fully intact (matching MD5 checksums on each file).
•    Implemented complete backups of all Portfolio metadata databases.
•    UC Backup reduced their prices recently, reducing our total storage and backup costs from $0.75/GB/month to $0.65/GB/month ($0.15/GB/month storage, $0.25/GB/month onsite backup, $0.25/GB/month offsite backup).  As we are currently using approximately 4TB of storage, this will save $400/month.

Communications Improvements
•    Implemented a significantly improved website, with updated marketing materials.
•    Performed outreach, to engage potential customers and to gather further requirements for the MVP Gen 2 platform
•    MVP Workshops–we are planning for two workshops for early Fall 2009:
-    Service Provider Workshop
•    October 2009
•    We will work with the service providers whose services inter-relate and coordinate with MVP activities (e.g the Library and ETS) to ensure that everyone’s plans and activities in this area are well coordinated and avoid overlap and duplication of effort.
-    MVP Community Workshop
•    October 2009
•    We will focus on knowledge exchange and developing of the next generation Media Vault platform and services.

MVP Spotlight- July 2009

Each month, we highlight news relating to digital scholarship, access and preservation at Berkeley and around the world. To contribute, email Lizzy.

On Campus
Visual Resources Collection History of Art, UC Berkeley
Image news and tech tips from the Visual Resources Collection
http://havrc.blogspot.com/
The History of Art Visual Resource Center (HAVRC), a partner of the MVP, recently launched a blog in June. “This blog [was] created to keep our primary users informed about image news, as well as to provide an archive of technology tips relevant to teaching with digital images.”

CollectionSpace 0.1 Release
http://www.collectionspace.org/current_release
CollectionSpace 0.1 was released earlier this month. Those interested in this project are encouraged to download and tinker with the 0.1 release, as well as send feedback to the team. “This first release is very limited in its functionality.  The goal of this first release was to demonstrate that all the layers of this complex system will actually work together as an integrated whole.” Users will be able to “create a new object record, view and edit existing records, and save any changes. The 0.1 release interface only allows for text entry; dates, controlled vocabularies, and pattern numbers (e.g. accession numbers) will be functional at a later date.” CollectionSpace 1.0 is expected to be completed at the end of May 2010.

Around the World
Terabytes Missing From The National Archives: Would the Cloud Be Safer?
By Steve Walling of Read Write Web
http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2009/07/06/06readwriteweb-terabytes-missing-from-the-national-archive-63543.html
According to the New York Times, an external hard drive containing 2 Terabytes of data from the National Archives had gone missing in May.  This prompted an investigation that has now “revealed that thousands of electronic storage devices have been lost or stolen. From external hard drives to entire servers, exactly how many devices and how much data has been compromised is unknown.” Steve Walling suggests that data might be better if placed in a cloud rather than a traditional data center. Even though the cloud has its own vulnerabilities as well, content will not be onsite, allowing people to walk off with an external drive or server. “It’s hard to steal the server holding someone’s social security number when you have no real idea where it is.”

Edinburgh Repository Fringe 2009: Beyond the Repository Fringe
Edinburgh, Scotland; Thursday July 30 & Friday 31st, 2009
http://wiki.repositoryfringe.org/index.php/Main_Page
The second Edinburgh Repository Fringe “un”conference will be held at the end of July. Repository developers, managers, researchers, administrators and onlookers are invited to  “see what’s been developed, and still developing in the Repository Landscape” as well as to participate in this year’s Repository Fringe challenge, which is “Design a REPOSITORY FOCUSED/ENHANCEMENT service to a researcher/academic/teacher that they would feel is intuitively useful TO THEM PERSONALLY.” Ben O’Steen and Sally Rumsey from the Oxford University Library Services will give the opening keynote and Clifford Lynch, of Coalition for Networked Information, will give the closing keynote.

World Library and Information Congress: 75th IFLA General Conference and Assembly
“Libraries create futures: Building on cultural heritage”
23-27 August 2009, Milan, Italy
http://www.ifla.org/annual-conference/ifla75/
Sponsered by OCLC, The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) will be hosting its 75th conference in August. The theme of this year’s conference is “Libraries create futures: Building on cultural heritage.” This international conference will focus on a variety of issues from around the world, including open access, repositories, digital librarianship, etc, and its role in different countries and cities.  According to its website, IFLA is the leading international body representing the interests of library and information services and their users. With approximately 1650 members in 145 countries, it is the global voice of the library and information profession.”

Digital Preservation Management Workshops and Tutorial
Next workshop: October 11-16, 2009
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/dpm/index.html
First developed at Cornell University, the digital training and preservation program will now be hosted by Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), at the University of Michigan. The website currently has tutorials, and the next workshop will be in October. “The workshop series is intended for managers who are or will be responsible for digital preservation programs in libraries, archives, and other cultural institutions. The goals of the workshop are to foster critical thinking in a technological realm and provide the means for exercising practical and responsible stewardship of digital assets in an age of technological uncertainty.”