Recollection: Integrating Data through Access

Abstract

Abstract. This demonstration of the Recollection project of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program at the Library of Congress will showcase a prototype platform, tools and environment for sharing and access to diverse born-digital collections. As the Program has addressed the development of distributed preservation through a national community of partner institutions, the challenge of access and interoperability has become more urgent. The network needs to be able to strategically bring collections under stewardship and keep an inventory without excessive burden on the collecting organizations. The data under stewardship is very diverse and follows standards acceptable within each content domain. These circumstances require an infrastructure that enables the community of NDIIPP Partners to share their collections and data on an ongoing basis. This allows NDIIPP to maintain the benefits of a distributed network of partners and also take advantage of the collections speaking to one another. DescriptionThe National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program at the Library of Congress is an initiative to develop a national strategy to collect, archive and preserve digital content for current and future generations. It is based on an understanding that digital stewardship on a national scale depends on active cooperation between communities. The NDIIPP network of partners have collected a diverse array of digital content, including social science datasets; geospatial information; websites and blogs; e-journals; audiovisual materials; and digital government records [1].These diverse collections are held in the dispersed repositories and archival systems of over 130 partner institutions where each organization collects, manages, and stores at-risk digital content according to what is most suitable for the industry or domain that it serves. This practice is necessary in a federated network of heterogeneous infrastructures but creates challenges in providing meaningful access across collections. However, it is clear that digital content grows in value exponentially as it is