MoMA and Artefactual launch new digital preservation management system
Evelyn McLellan
Artefactual is proud to announce the public availability of Binder, a digital preservation management application developed in partnership with the Museum of Modern Art.
Developed over the course of a year, this marks the initial public open-sourcing of the code and related documentation.
Read about it and watch a demo on MoMA’s Inside/Out blog!
View the code in our GitHub repository: https://github.com/artefactual/binder
View the initial documentation on Read the Docs: http://binder.readthedocs.org/en/latest/
Binder user forum: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/binder-repository
We look forward to developing Binder further, to better help cultural heritage institutions meet the challenges of long-term digital preservation.
What is Binder?
Originally developed to assist MoMA in managing the complex preservation requirements of time-based media and born-digital works, Binder integrates and enhances functionality from two existing open-source preservation and access applications:
Archivematica, an open-source digital preservation system that is designed to maintain standards-based, long-term access to collections of digital objects
AtoM (Access to Memory), an open-source, web-based application for standards-based description and access
Binder has also been integrated with The Museum System (TMS), and can pull in artwork metadata via the TMS API developed by Steve Moore at the Museum of Modern Art (https://github.com/smoore4moma/TmsApi).
What does Binder do?
Binder aims to support standards-based digital preservation management by providing users with a single place to view administrative, technical, descriptive and preservation metadata about digital objects in a repository and to manage the relationships between those objects. This functionality gives repository managers the information they need to craft appropriate preservation policies and implement decisions for long-term care.
With Binder you can:
Import Archival Information Packages (AIPs) and reference copies of digital objects from Archivematica, and relate them to descriptive metadata imported from TMS or created in Binder.
Compare the descriptive and technical metadata of digital objects in a graphical user interface.
Understand the relationships between multiple versions of a work and between multiple components of a work
Relate works to their supporting technologies (such as rendering environments, interpreters or plugins) and documentation
View and download an AIP’s digital objects, along with their technical metadata.
Track who downloads digital objects from your repository and why.
Run and manage fixity checks of preserved AIPs, and receive alerts if a fixity check fails.
Generate and save statistical reports on digital holdings for acquisitions planning preservation risk assessment, budget management and more.
Current project status
As of today (2014-05-14), the code developed by Artefactual in conjunction with MoMA for use in the Binder project has been open-sourced, and made available on GitHub. We have also started a documentation project, written in Sphinx reST, and available via Read the Docs:
This code is provided as is, without any guarantees as to general applicability or use. Binder was developed according to MoMA’s specific requirements and technical environment, and is currently in production only at MoMA. However, we have set up a User Forum where curious conservationists and dedicated developers can come to ask questions and receive basic support from our team and other community users.
Future project goals
Artefactual believes that Binder can help cultural institutions meet the challenges of long-term digital preservation. We hope to see the Binder project grow, and are interested in partnering with other cultural heritage institutions with diverse multimedia and artwork holdings.
Binder’s strength is in its ability to pull data from several disparate applications used in preservation and conservation, and bring that information together into a user-friendly interface. As the project develops, we would like to see this approach maintained and expanded, so that Binder will be able to communicate with a wide range of existing open-source tools. In general, Artefactual prefers to collaborate with and participate in many of the exciting community development efforts already underway, rather than compete by duplicating the functionality of existing projects.
We look forward to finding other institutions looking for innovative approaches to digital preservation and repository management, and partnering with them to help realize the potential of the Binder project. If you are interested in discussing Binder development with Artefactual, please feel free to contact us at in...@artefactual.com. And watch this list for webinar announcements and other ways of learning about Binder!
Evelyn McLellan
President, Artefactual systems Inc.