Friday, November 27, 2009

Legacy (data that is)

I tend to give my profession as "Jerk of All Trades" when asked in a context where that's going to be interpreted charitably. Nominally I am charged with Computer and Information Systems Support (i.e. Desktop Support). That sort of work including training, which I perversely enjoy won't take up more than 50-60% of my workday on average leaving the rest for the more interesting learning experiences. Most recently, this remainder time has been eaten by the seemingly infinite task of converting the collection management data and systems of a large and ancient research and institutional archival repository - including a location database that talks to an aged behemoth of an ILS. The exciting variety within the legacy data has been the real beast up to now. It's a bit like turning an oil tanker - churn away, all ahead full for a very long time before the view out the front window begins to change in the least. So, "converting to what?" one might ask. The plan is for all the various description, and management and location data to converge into the open source Archivists' Toolkit.

We (I'm only a small part of a valiant team effort) have also been engaged in a development-on-a-shoestring game trying to add plug-ins necessary to handle our systems' specific needs. Most of this has been thoroughly detailed on the AT @ Yale blog by one of my hardworking co-conspirators. Shortly, although at this point I wouldn't bet a nickle on the exact date, we will present the rest of the staff with an as-finished-as-it's-gonna-get-for-now prototype version. Then begins the hard part of getting the thing to actually work in the real world with actual users! Oh the bugs and heretofore un-thought-of paradoxes that crawl through my dreams.

One of my other sidelines has been thinking and being minimally involved in digital preservation - particularly for AV materials. I find that the insane maze of formats, files and standards that one must thread to even begin to plan the migration of a video archive into digital for the purpose of preservation boggles the mind. It is also a good illustration of the problem legacy data presents in any collection management system. A reputation as a large and venerable institution is one sort of legacy, but it hides a legacy of another slightly less thrilling sort.

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