Background

The Media Vault Program (MVP) is an interdisciplinary, community-based program that promotes archival digital scholarly workflows, enables digital information conservation, provides self-service management of digital collections, and assures a digital environment which supports research, teaching and public service.

The primary need the MVP addresses is the lack of campus-wide resources available to address our growing reliance on digital media for research, teaching and public service.

As we observed during the MV proof-of concept phase, departments have resorted to implementing their own unique solutions but are faced with significant issues such as:

• Absent or inadequate business resumption plans for faculty and campus digital collections. This presents a significant risk to campus research and operations, and digital collections across the campus are in danger.
• Overlapping and siloed departmental investments in infrastructure that still leave the content at risk.
• Limited ability to make digital collections more widely accessible to researchers, faculty and the public. This is of great concern within and across disciplines, since the potential value of the collections cannot be realized.
• Lack of consistent and/or structured metadata to describe the collections, which raise the value of the content through accessibility.
• High cost of curation and preservation activities which make digital preservation an even more compelling avenue and critical issue.
• Lack of knowledge and skills within campus departments

• technical skills necessary to safely store and share content over the web
• knowledge of best practices and workflows to support the management or archiving of digital collections
• where to go to get help

• A number of niche providers have been identified within our campus, UC system and the private sector. However, a cohesive and integrated end-to-end solution is not generally available; risks and gaps not apparent; directions and strategies are unavailable at an institutional level.

As we stepped back with a look towards the future, it was evident the campus also needs to take action on opportunities as described below:

• We now live in the digital age. It is the expectation of our faculty, students, researchers and staff that robust digital archival and data stewardship services are widely available as a matter-of-course to support 21^st century scholarship, teaching and research. The lack of resources in this area has been described as a competitive disadvantage for research and for the hiring and retaining faculty, researchers and students. Conversely, these resources will put our campus on equal footing with the many institutions that have adopted digital preservation programs to their core business practices. How do we turn a competitive disadvantage into a competitive advantage?

• Archival and data stewardship services must be available, robust, simple to implement and integrate with 21^st century scholarship, teaching and research. Needed services include digital object management, storage, backup, and curatorial/preservation activities throughout digital asset production workflows (from offline in-the-field capture to academic and public sharing).
• There is a strong need to implement best practices in the highly complex domain of digital object and archival workflow management. Neither the
• Programmatic, technological and service solutions that lead to order-of-magnitude improvements in workflow efficiencies are especially critical for digital content and knowledge management throughout the academic enterprise where the priceless commodity is time, measured in human effort.
• Digital data deluge and loss is a global crisis and a major concern that impacts all activity areas across our campus. Current backup and storage offering costs are out of reach of most end-users. Adoption is further impeded by the complexity of solutions, as well as a lack of trust in their long-term sustainability.
• UC Berkeley, internationally recognized for its research, needs to lead by example in digital scholarship by committing to innovative programs that build on the core strengths of the university, including its network of global and industrial partners.

MVP Approach

Much of the thinking around the Media Vault Program (MVP) is based on the results an eighteen-month, multi-disciplinary proof-of-concept project (MVPOC). This study explored needs, workflows and practices necessary to manage digital assets with the use of a commercial digital asset management product.

The solution we propose is the Media Vault Program itself. Aspects of this include:

Community: The program will establish a community-of-practice for the campus which will provide a much needed forum for those within our institution to define and share their needs, strategies, methods, priorities, solutions, and content.

Governance: Based on the resources available, a representative steering committee will be assembled to prioritize the areas of focus and make key decisions on all areas of the program including products and services, research projects, partnerships, fundraising and the performance of delivered services.

Communications: A key function will be to share the content of the community, to provide updates on the services and projects within the program.

Research and Development: In collaboration with MVP participants, partners and external groups, the MVP will conduct or participate in a variety of research projects consistent with the goals of the community and steering committees.

Products, Services and related Roadmaps: The challenge is too great for any single service provider. In addition, a number of groups within and outside the campus have shown themselves to be leaders in their specific domains. As a fundamental principle, the MVP will seek to integrate the service roadmaps of established partners, and will seek to develop and deliver services to address critical short term gaps where they are found. In some cases, the MVP will seek to broker services with partners.

MV Certification: As an available resource, the MVP will certify alternate or external products or services to be consistent with the needs of the community and with best digital collections management archiving or preservation principles, therefore being consistent with the long term direction of the MVP.

Fundraising and Sustainability: We intend that the MVP conduct fundraising to augment operating costs and to sponsor the development of new facilities and resources. These efforts will be lead by the MVP team, or where the MVP acts as a participant of fundraising efforts by its partners.

In the first year of operation, the MVP will release three core services delivered to a selected number of campus partners. Once a longer-term platform has been implemented, these services will be released as a recharge service in FY09.

1. MV Archival Storage storage facility. This will be packaged within a prescribed best practice workflow and packaged support. Includes security administration and direct access via a
2. MV Digital Asset Management leverages MV Archive Storage and adds tools to manage the content, the workflow, associated metadata and tags, web-publishing and packaged support, training and consulting.
3. MV Consulting training, best practice workflow design and configuration, metadata consulting, web site development and publishing template customization, integration, conversion services and project management.