The objective of preservation is not only to transmit our heritage to future generations, but above all to maintain the capability to understand and reuse what we have preserved.
The peculiar characteristics of digital objects imply several difficulties in their preservation.
Even if it is obviously necessary to preserve the bits, this is not enough since more information, at many different levels (e.g. the format in which they are encoded, the semantics necessary for their intelligibility, the rights which are on them, etc.) is required in order to reach the ability to maintain and reuse these objects.
Moreover, digital preservation undergoes several threats which are related to financial and legal aspects, technological obsolescence, changes in environment and in the people knowledge base, trustworthiness of repositories.
The CASPAR project, involving an extremely wide range of disciplines and taking the OAIS conceptual model as its base, has tried to find both theoretical and practical solutions to these threats by defining principles and concepts, and by developing tools and methodologies. Even if it has not found all the answers, it has reached satisfactory results.
This presentation explains the risks and the solutions proposed by CASPAR, paying attention to some important concepts, e.g. that fundamental of Representation Information, and outlines the course of the work done and its future proposals.
What are Publishers doing about digital preservation? By Eefke Smit STM. Video from river-valley.tv
Team Digital Preservation and the Deadly Cryptic Conundrum, by wepreserve
Koninklijke Bibliotheek and Digital Preservation
Who guards the guards – Meeting the challenges of digital preservation
Long Term Digital Preservation (Some initiatives in India and Germany)
Dr. Paul Ayris about digital preservation
Data curation: just in time or just in case? (Michael Lesk, … The Immense data collections now being built in many fields are changing the way science happens, which may improve the public’s understanding of research and encourage more young people to pursue careers in science, according to Michael Lesk, professor of library and information science and award-winning teacher. Early in his career, Lesk worked on the development of UNIX, the ground-breaking computer code that helped launch the digital age, which is one of the reasons he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.