Governance and Stewardship of Digital Resources

This page describes the assets associated with the Cambridge Historical Commission digital archives assembled and managed in a cloud-based installation of Omeka-S. There will be a large amount of time and effort involved in the assembly of assets in this system -- including code, digital documents and their metadata. There are many potential things that can go wrong that might lead to the loss or degradation of some or all of these assets. Protecting the archive involves having responsible parties being aware of their roles in understanding what the assets are; how the assets are backed up and restored when necessary, and following a routine of checking and reporting on the health of the system on a regular basis.

About Names: You will notice that we prefix certain file names and service names with CHC rather than CDASH. This is because we can think of CDASH is one collection within the Historical Commission's greater Omeka installation. Even though CDASH is the first and only collection at the moment, it is foreseeable that the CHC's Omeka installation may eventually host other collections.

• CDASH Assets Summary
• Predictable Hazards
• Stewardship Roles and Responsibilities
• IT Service Agreement

CHC Omeka Assets

For this discussion of governance, we can think of assets as digital files that would be difficult and costly to replace. A detailed view of the assets involved with the CHC Omeka installation is provided in a dedicated page outlining the CHC Omeka Assets. To summarize briefly, they concict of the following:

• Customized code and configuration knowledge
• Cumulative Administrative Information such as usernames and passwords, page content and other modifications to the Omeka site.
• Digital Documents and Metadata

Predictable Hazards

A plan and governance system set up to protect assets may benefit from setting up systems and procedures for preventing or for recovering from predictable hazards that may bring about the loss or degradation of assets.

• Hardware failure, locally or on the cloud host.
• Cloud resources being de-commissioned due to accidents or misunderstandings.
• Personnel churn of CHC employees or consultants.
• Accidental deletion of files and/or data.
• Obsolescence of Omeka and/or its dependencies requiring planned or unplanned migration of documents and metadata to another asset management system.

Roles and Responsibilities

The following is a draft sketch of a set of governance roles responsibilities and relationships and procedures that may provide a high degree of protection for the CHC's investments in digital archives.

CHC Omeka Owner

Most likely this is the Director of the CHC.

• Is responsible for the long term viability of the Omeka installation and all associated assets.
• Makes and maintains agreements with the IT department.
• Hires the CHC Omeka Administrator and is part of the team that manages the CHC Omeka Developer/Consultant.
• Receives weekly reports on the hhealth of the CHC Omeka INstallation form the CHC Omeka Adminstrator.

Cambridge Cloud Owner / Administrator

Most likely this is the director of the Cambridge IT department and their designated cloud administrator.

• Pays monthly Azure bills.
• Informs CHC Owner and Administrator of any issues that may be of interest regarding the cloud host.
• Holds full rights to commission and delegate Azure resources
• Evaluates and advises on system design.
• Keeps a copy of the basic CHC Omeka Architecture and Recovery memo on-file
• in case of the unexpected need to bring on a new CHC Omeka Developer/Consultant, can assist with evaluating and on-boarding candidates.

CHC Omeka Developer / Consultant

• Designs, develops, documents installs and provides training for the applications related to the CHC Omeka Archive

Developer Skills Required:

• Understand how to develop LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP web apps) similar to wordpress.
• Javascript and SASS/CSS
• Building web applications with Docker for local development aand deploying them on the web host.

CHC Omeka Administrator

• Creates new digital documents with metadata and integrates these into the Omeka archive
• Works with staff to facilitate the use and adjustment of archived resources
• Weekly checks the integrity of the collection and alerts the Developer/Consultant of any problems or questions in a timely manner (within a week)
• Reports on archive integrity to CHC Omeka Owner every week.
• Maintains local copies of the CHC-Offline files.
• Evaluates system documentation to assure that the system is transferrable to a new Developer Consultant if needed.