Digital Preservation: The State of the Art November 1999 Update Marc Fresko CONSOLIDATING THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY SPACE - 18 NOVEMBER 1999 © Copyright Applerace Limited 1999

CONSOLIDATING THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY SPACE - 18 NOVEMBER 1999 What is “Digital Preservation”?  Storage, maintenance and access to digital objects over the long term.  Preservation of artefactual information by digitising its image

CONSOLIDATING THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY SPACE - 18 NOVEMBER 1999 Why Does Digital Preservation Matter?  Because the following are growing:  the volume of culturally and scientifically important data...  complexity of digital objects...  our reliance on digital data…  the rate at which we are losing data...  …and we do not know how we will manage digital data in the long term.

CONSOLIDATING THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY SPACE - 18 NOVEMBER 1999 Four Preservation Approaches  Migration  Emulation  Technology Preservation  Rosetta Stone

CONSOLIDATING THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY SPACE - 18 NOVEMBER 1999 Migration

CONSOLIDATING THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY SPACE - 18 NOVEMBER 1999 Emulation

CONSOLIDATING THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY SPACE - 18 NOVEMBER 1999 Technology Preservation

CONSOLIDATING THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY SPACE - 18 NOVEMBER 1999 Rosetta Stone

CONSOLIDATING THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY SPACE - 18 NOVEMBER 1999 State of the Art Study: Objectives  Identify and analyse existing guidelines  Evaluate their applicability for libraries, archives and museums  Assemble a reference set and identify gaps

CONSOLIDATING THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY SPACE - 18 NOVEMBER 1999 Approach  Survey  Research  Analysis  Evaluation

CONSOLIDATING THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY SPACE - 18 NOVEMBER 1999 Findings - Summary  Plenty of “guidelines” suggested  Few contain advice  Difficult to compare guidelines  Most of them address only small parts of the preservation process...

CONSOLIDATING THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY SPACE - 18 NOVEMBER 1999 Coverage of Guidelines Create Content Capture Content Receive Content Preserve Digital Objects

CONSOLIDATING THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY SPACE - 18 NOVEMBER 1999 Guideline Coverage  Well covered:  Scanning  Digitisation  Text  Data  Badly Covered:  Metadata  Complex objects  Large volumes  Preservation

CONSOLIDATING THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY SPACE - 18 NOVEMBER 1999 Progress in 1999  InterPares  Universal Preservation Format (UPF)  “Bundling”  Open Archival Information Systems (OAIS)

CONSOLIDATING THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY SPACE - 18 NOVEMBER 1999 Positive Steps for Today  Use widely-agreed, standards  Capture, record, and preserve with the data as much metadata as possible  Store also copies of any special software  Take steps for short-term preservation

CONSOLIDATING THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY SPACE - 18 NOVEMBER 1999 RECOMMENDATIONS (1)  Definition of needs in specific domains  Development of reference sets  Development of standard sets of preservation metadata  Development of standards for long-term deposit and preservation

CONSOLIDATING THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY SPACE - 18 NOVEMBER 1999 RECOMMENDATIONS (2)  Research on the preservation of dynamic or complex datasets  Investigation of the limits of technology preservation for PC, CD-ROM, DVD devices  Facilitation of preservation of PCs, CD-ROM and DVD devices, medium term

CONSOLIDATING THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY SPACE - 18 NOVEMBER 1999 Why Does Digital Preservation Matter?  Because the following are growing:  the volume of culturally and scientifically important data  complexity of digital objects  our reliance on digital data  the rate at which we are losing data If we do not solve this problem soon, the history of the late 20th century may disappear into the “digital dark ages”

Digital Preservation: The State of the Art Marc Fresko CONSOLIDATING THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY SPACE - 18 NOVEMBER 1999 © Copyright Applerace Limited 1999