Introduction to Digital Preservation

Overview

Teaching: 5 min
Exercises: 0 min
Questions
  • What is digital preservation and why should I care?

Objectives
  • Understand the benefits of a digital preservation workflow.

  • Understand how to start utilizing digital preservation.

Digital preservation is the active management of digital content over time to ensure ongoing access

Digital Data by Randall Munroe, https://xkcd.com/1683/

Digital Data by Randall Munroe, https://xkcd.com/

Digital preservation does NOT mean that everything should be digitized

Instead, digital preservation emphasizes the stewardship of born-digital and digitized objects throughout their lifecycle:

Digital Content Life Cycle, by DigitalNZ, https://blogs.loc.gov/thesignal/files/2012/02/nz_lifecycle.png

Digital Content Life Cycle by DigitalNZ, https://blogs.loc.gov/thesignal/2012/02/life-cycle-models-for-digital-stewardship/

The three keys to creating long-term access to digital objects are:

Preservation is a means to provide access for future generations

Obstacles to the preservation of digital objects:

Obstacles to curating digital objects:

Obstacles to maintaining digital object discoverability:

Key Points

  • The goal of digital preservation is to provide long term accessibility to digitized and born-digital materials.

  • Digital preservation can be applied at every level.