The fields of long-term digital preservation (DP) and enterprise content management (ECM) have remained, until recently, rather separated. Along with increasing amounts of digital content and evolving DP services, there is a need for maximal automation of preservation processes from ECM systems instead of continuing current resource-consuming practices. This paper aims at a design problem definition on the integration of ECM and DP solutions. In order to motivate and to define the problem in more detail, we conducted a review on ECM and DP literatures touching the issue. The review reveals a research gap addressing a need for designing new middleware solutions for interactive processes between ECM and DP. We suggest a general-level model of three such processes between ECM and DP: preservation administration, pre-ingest, and access. The article concludes with avenues for future research on novel solutions for integrating DP with contemporary ECM and other information systems in organizations.

In organizations, information systems produce increasing amounts of digital information that needs to be preserved. Simultaneously, human intervention in preservation activities needs to be minimized, due to scarce resources available for preservation. Thus, digital preservation services need to be integrated with other organizational information systems as seamlessly as possible, and preservation activities need to be maximally automated. Selection of adequate cloud-based preservation services poses yet another set of challenges for reaching the seamless integration and automation. Two sources of challenges relate to administrating integrated digital preservation and information systems. Firstly, information systems change over time. Secondly, digital preservation services change over time. This paper contributes by identifying and analyzing scenarios and design issues of administering digital preservation in connection to the changes in information systems and preservation services over time. We also suggest seven generic tasks of the “preservation administration” component, which are needed between digital preservation services and information systems and discuss about the choices of locating the operative responsibilities and middleware.

Purpose

This paper aims to automate pre-ingest workflow for preserving digital content, such as records, through middleware that integrates potentially many information systems with potentially several alternative digital preservation services.

Design/methodology/approach

This design research approach resulted in a design for model- and component-based software for such workflow. A proof-of-concept prototype was implemented and demonstrated in context of a European research project, ForgetIT.

Findings

The study identifies design issues of automated pre-ingest for digital preservation while using middleware as a design choice for this purpose. The resulting model and solution suggest functionalities and interaction patterns based on open interface protocols between the source systems of digital content, middleware and digital preservation services. The resulting workflow automates the tasks of fetching digital objects from the source system with metadata extraction, preservation preparation and transfer to a selected preservation service. The proof-of-concept verified that the suggested model for pre-ingest workflow and the suggested component architecture was technologically implementable. Future research and development needs to include new solutions to support context-aware preservation management with increased support for configuring submission agreements as a basis for dynamic automation of pre-ingest and more automated error handling.

Originality/value

The paper addresses design issues for middleware as a design choice to support automated pre-ingest in digital preservation. The suggested middleware architecture supports many-to-many relationships between the source information systems and digital preservation services through open interface protocols, thus enabling dynamic digital preservation solutions for records management.

Research in digital preservation field has realized the need for au-tomation of digital preservation activities. Without automation, the preservation of digital entities will be a complex and labor-intensive task. A middleware con-cept has been introduced by scholars to support automation of interactions be-tween content management systems and digital preservation systems. To boost the automation of workflows in the middleware, we introduce a component within the middleware, namely Context-aware Preservation Manager (CaPM), which is in charge of administration of the inner components of the middleware and the workflows for bi-directional interactions between content management systems and digital preservation systems. We describe the specifications of the Context-aware Preservation Manager and depict its inner components. Further, we explain about the processes that are improved, supported or can run automat-ically as a result of functionalities of Context-aware Preservation Manager.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is the automation of an error-handling workflow that, in case of failures, will take over a pre-ingest workflow which is originally designed for preserving digital content through a middleware for many-to-many interactions between Information Systems and Digital Preservation Systems.

Design/methodology/approach – A Design Science Research (DSR) approach is taken resulted in a model and proof-of-concept for an automatic error-handling workflow with compensation action. The proof-of-concept was demonstrated and evaluated through several simulation scenarios.

Findings – This study pinpoints the elements of consideration in designing a workflow for maximally automating handling of failures in a pre-ingest workflow. The error-handling workflow automatically takes over the original workflow and executes a backward path to compensate for the side-effects of components that have processed digital content before the failure occurred. The proof-of-concept, demonstrated and evaluated, verifies the technological feasibility of implementing the model. The evaluation of the model shows a considerable reduction in manual work and its complexity for handling errors. Three design principles are proposed as a contribution to the knowledge of design to afford a similar purpose.  

Originality/value – The approach introduced in this study for automatic error-handling in a pre-ingest workflow has not yet been applied in existing solutions.

In the field of Digital Preservation, rapid growth of digitized data has made the need for an automatic process to perform digital preservation tasks undeniable. One of the solutions to maximally automate interaction between Information Systems and Digital Preservation Systems is involvement of a middleware between the two systems. However, the middleware calls for human interaction in case an error occurs during a workflow within the middleware. This article suggests a workflow for automatically handling errors in the pre-ingest workflow in the middleware. Moreover, in this article, information on the implementation of such workflow will be provided and contributions of this workflow to the existing model of middleware will be pointed out.