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Cultural, Artistic and Scientific knowledge Preservation, for Access and Retrieval

Project description

Access to and preservation of cultural and scientific resources
Protecting our digital heritage for future generations

This large-scale project addressed the growing challenge of preserving digital information, upon which society is increasingly dependent but which is intrinsically fragile. The CASPAR team has created a framework of tools and infrastructure components to support the end-to-end preservation of all types of digitally encoded information and thus help producers, curators and users of digital resources share the burden of preservation.

Work in CASPAR was driven by the following objectives:

  • enhance techniques for capturing representation information and other preservation related information;
    design virtualisation services for preserving resources despite changes in computer hardware and software and storage systems;
  • ensure trustworthiness of preserved data with standard features for digital rights management, authentication, and accreditation;
  • research more sophisticated access to and use of preserved digital resources such as intuitive query and browsing mechanisms.

The project established an authoritative foundation methodology for digital preservation activities. Guiding principle was the application of the Open Archival Information Systems Reference Model (OAIS, ISO 14721).

Further, through training and dissemination activities, CASPAR contributed to raising awareness about the critical importance of digital preservation among the relevant user-communities. This should facilitate the emergence of a more diverse offer of systems and services for preservation of digital resources.

The CASPAR infrastructure components and tools proved to be applicable to essentially all types of digitally encoded information, whether from an archival or contemporary source. This is important because the artefacts created in the preservation process, for example for access control, will also require preservation, as will the CASPAR key components themselves.

CASPAR has brought together a consortium covering important digital holdings, representing scientific, cultural and creative expertise, together with commercial partners, and world leaders in the field of information preservation.

Testbeds
To validate the research work, CASPAR was tested with different types of digital information, in a wide range of user communities: science, performing arts and cultural heritage. The testbeds produced were embedded in operational systems within the CASPAR consortium, but were easy to integrate into other operational systems.

  • Cultural data: The UNESCO World Heritage testbed dealt with preservation of all data necessary to document, visualise and model archaeological sites. CASPAR provided a valuable resource to assist conservation experts in restoring the associated site even if its original state changes or deteriorates.
  • Contemporary art: This testbed focused on computer-based arts, such as contemporary music, which produces highly complex objects and relies on specific hardware, instructions and interaction devices. To recreate performances, the archive must allow the retrieval of all these elements.
  • Science data: This testbed assessed the requirements of the Earth Science community, where information - such as long-term records of atmospheric data – is being collected with varying instruments and processed with evolving software.

A worldwide network of users
The Preservation User Community founded by CASPAR is a worldwide network of professionals and organisations with a stake in the preservation of digital information: curators, service providers, memory institutions, researchers, and creators and users of digital resources in general.

CASPAR will address the growing challenge facing society of a deluge of intrinsically fragile digital information, upon which it is increasingly dependent, by building a pioneering framework to support the end-to-end preservation "lifecycle" for scientific, artistic and cultural information, based on existing and emerging standards. The ambitious challenge to build up a common preservation framework for heterogeneous data and variety of innovative applications will be achieved through the following objectives:- to establish the foundation methodology for covering all preservation aspects. The first RandD activity of CASPAR is a broad analysis that lays the foundations for the rest of the project. The guiding principle of CASPAR is the application of the OAIS Reference Model- to research, develop and integrate advanced components to be used in all the preservation activities. These components will be the building blocks of the CASPAR Framework- to create the CASPAR framework: the software platform that enables the building of services and applications that can be adapted to multiple areas and, in particular, to the three testbeds envisaged in the project- to demonstrate the validity of the CASPAR through heterogeneous testbeds, covering a wide range of disciplines from science to culture to contemporary arts and media, providing a reliable common infrastructure for allThe CASPAR consortium will guarantee the future evolution of CASPAR. This ambitious goal will be pursued through: - the building of the CASPAR preservation user community creating consensus around the initiative and gathering a critical mass of potential users- The realisation of a self-sustainable model for the CASPAR process.To achieve this, CASPAR brings together a consortium covering important digital holdings, with the appropriate extensive scientific, cultural and creative expertise, together with commercial partners, and world leaders in the field of information preservation.

Call for proposal

FP6-2005-IST-5
See other projects for this call

Coordinator

THE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FACILITIES COUNCIL
EU contribution
€ 1 340 082,00
Address


United Kingdom

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Activity type
Research Organisations
Total cost
No data

Participants (17)