Open Planets Foundation

The Harvard Library developed FITS, the File Information Tool Set, as part of the ingest processing of its Digital Repository Service (DRS). This was mostly Spencer McEwen’s work. It’s a “Swiss army knife,” running a number of different tools to identify formats and provide metadata information about files.

While the digital preservation challenge is caused by technology, it is not solved by technology. Many research projects started out with the ambition to devise a technology solution (migration, emulation, encapsulation, etc.) and many memory institutions thought it would suffice to apply the R&D results: the methods and associated tools. However, it has become clear that such all encompassing solutions do not exist.

About a year ago, work started on packaging SCAPE tools. Jpylyzer was the first SCAPE tool that was turned into a Debian package.

File Information Tool Set (FITS) is the Harvard Library’s “Swiss army knife” for file characterization. Created originally for use with the library’s Digital Repository System (DRS), it’s been made available as open source, and several other institutions have made use of it.

The typical digital artefact or complex object does not function (render, execute, …) without a certain software environment. Emulation-as-a-Service (EaaS) provides original environments running in platform emulators. Depending on the (complex) object to be handled, several software components are required to reproduce an original environment.

As many of you already know, I have taken over the role of Chairman of the Board of the Open Planets Foundation from Adam Farquhar as of February 1, 2012.

Clearly, Adam has already presided over an enormous achievement, first in conceiving and establishing the Open Planets Foundation, and second in bringing the OPF to the point where it is a stable, viable organisation that is both self-sustaining and debt-free. On behalf of the Board, I thank him and applaud his efforts.