Session C
Natasa Milic-Frayling CEO, Intact Digital. Professor Emerita, University of Nottingham |
"Securing long-term access and use of digital documentary heritage"
ABSTRACT
Documentary heritage comes in different forms, from physical documents to digital files created using specialized software technologies. It captures knowledge and experiences that we need to pass onto future generations. Thus, we must ensure its reliable and long-term access and use. However, physical documentary artefacts deteriorate over time. We typically apply conversation and digitization methods to preserve them. At the same time, the digitized copies and the born-digital documentary heritage become inaccessible over time due to rapid technology obsolescence, in particular, the obsolescence of software needed to decode digital files and support the use of the content. This dependence on software is a key issue for long-term access to the digital documentary heritage and requires a concerted effort to incorporate software care into the archiving and preservation practices. Fortunately, there are effective approaches to managing software aging using software virtualization techniques. Similarly, reliable and convenient use of software and documents can be achieved through secure virtual desktops. In this presentation we discuss ways to expand archiving and content publishing practices to incorporate long-term care of software and secure reliable long-term access to digital documentary heritage. BIO
Dr Natasa Milic-Frayling is a Founder and CEO of Intact Digital Ltd, a company that provides a platform and services for hosting legacy software installations to enable long-term digital data readability and use. Intact Digital works with highly regulated sectors such as Pharma and Life Sciences to support compliance with the data integrity regulations, reconstruction of research studies and reproducibiity of data analyses. Natasa has 25 years of experience in computer science research and innovation, including 17 years at Microsoft Research. She authored over 100 research publications and has a dozen of approved patents to her name. She is Professor Emerita at the University of Nottingham where she spent 5 years serving as Chair of Data Science and contributing to the University research strategy on Data Science and AI. Natasa is actively engaged with a broader professional community on critical issues that arise from inter-disciplinary use of digtial technologies ranging from professional ethic, privacy and design transparency to digital obsolescence and responsible innovation. She served as a member of the Association for Computing Europe Council and as Chair of ACM Women Europe. She is an active member of the Preservation Sub-Committee within the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme and serves as Chair of the Research and Technology Working group for the UNESCO PERSIST project. Through Intact Digital, Natasa is working on effective and sustainable solutions for long-term use of software technologies needed for continued use of digital content, reproducibility of data analyses and responsible innovation in computing. In her research career, Natasa specialized in inter-disciplinary design, prototyping, and evaluation of information and communication systems, leveraging advances in machine learning, AI and large scale data analytics. |