Digital Legal Information Preservation: Chesapeake Project at 2

The Chesapeake Project Legal Information Archive has released its Two-Year Pilot Project Evaluation report. Chesapeake, a leading testbed project respecting preservation of born-digital legal information, is a joint effort between the Georgetown University Law Library, the Maryland State Law Library, the Virginia State Law Library, and the Legal Information Preservation Alliance (LIPA). Sarah Rhodes, Digital Preservation Librarian at Georgetown University Law Library, is the Chesapeake Project Manager. Background on the project is available in Sarah’s and Dana Neacsu’s recent article, linked from here.

Among the pilot project report’s findings:

• During the two year pilot project, Chesapeake harvested and archived “4,306 digital items representing roughly 1,872 titles”;
• After switching from the original OCLC Digital Archive platform to
  “a new CONTENTdm/Digital Archive” platform, usage increased dramatically, from 6,612 total accesses during the first 15 months of the pilot, to 177,152 total accesses during the period June 2008-February 2009;
• Broken links (i.e., “link rot”) among archived materials rose “from 8.3 percent in 2008 to 14.3 percent in 2009″;
• “Staffing and time commitments varied according to institution size, with hours per week devoted to the project ranging by institution from two to 25″;
• The most time-consuming project activities were (in descending order):
  • “[c]ataloging archived items”;
  • “archive metadata entry and editing”;
  • “selecting and monitoring Web-based publications for archiving”;
  • “Web harvesting”; and
  • “general project coordination”;
• The major challenges faced during the pilot included:
  • the transition to the new platform;
  • “changes in harvesting, indexing, and metadata editing functionality with an updated release of CONTENTdm”;
  • “the time and effort required to catalog titles selected for the digital archive”; and
  • “expanding the project and generating interest in its efforts as it moves into the post-pilot phase.”

The reports announces that “[h]aving successfully completed its initial two-year pilot phase, The Chesapeake Project Legal Information Archive is currently expanding. Law libraries nationwide are encouraged to join this collaborative digital archive or establish similar preservation initiatives under the auspices of the Legal Information Preservation Alliance (LIPA).”

Congratulations to the Chesapeake team on a successful pilot and thanks for providing such thorough documentation of the project. For more information on Chesapeake, see the Chesapeake Website. For more information on LIPA’s digital preservation activities, see the LIPA Website.

Tags: Chesapeake Project, Legal Information Preservation Alliance, LIPA, Preservation of digital legal information, Preservation of legal information