PLANETS: integrated services for digital preservation

PLANETS (Preservation and Long-term Access through NETworked Services) is a European initiative to provide long-term access to large digital collections. I originally came across an article and followed up by looking at the website for more information. PLANETS seems to be predominantly about tool development with the goal of creating a sustainable framework for “increasing Europe's ability to ensure access in perpetuity to its digital information.” The project began in June 2006 and is funded by the European Union under the Sixth Framework Programme.

Planets is not a repository project but expects each participating institution to maintain storage for their digital data. The goal is to work toward preserving entire collections, not just creating stand-alone applications that can handle one aspect of data preservation, such as migration or emulation. The project is a collaborative effort based on the idea that no single institution is going to be able to handle the level of development needed. The initiative is drawing from the expertise and experience of numerous partners in different countries.

The website explains the deliverables:

Preservation Planning services that empower organisations to define, evaluate, and execute preservation
Methodologies, tools and services for the Characterisation of digital objects
Innovative solutions for Preservation Actions tools which will transform and emulate obsolete digital assets
An Interoperability Framework to seamlessly integrate tools and services in a distributed service network
A Testbed to provide a consistent and coherent evidence-base for the objective evaluation of different protocols, tools, services and complete preservation plans
A comprehensive Dissemination and Takeup program to ensure vendor adoption and effective user training.

After hearing a presentation on digital preservation initiatives in the US by classmates in another course, I am interested in the differences between the systems in place in the EU that make this kind of large scale collaborative project possible. Reflecting on the Larsen article, On the Threshold of Cyberscholarship, I realize that PLANETS falls clearly into the research stage of activity, where tool development is key to the success of a collective infrastructure for access to digital materials. I get the impression that European institutions, and maybe scholars, are more likely to achieve success in the area of cyberinfrastructure development. Is this because of funding, social behavior, scholarly expectations?