In library and archival science, digital preservation is a formal endeavor to ensure that digital information of continuing value remains accessible and usable.
It involves planning, resource allocation, and application of preservation methods and technologies, and it combines policies, strategies and actions to ensure access to reformatted and “born-digital” content, regardless of the challenges of media failure and technological change. The goal of digital preservation is the accurate rendering of authenticated content over time.
The Association for Library Collections and Technical Services Preservation and Reformatting Section of the American Library Association, defined digital preservation as combination of “policies, strategies and actions that ensure access to digital content over time.”According to the Harrod’s Librarian Glossary, digital preservation is the method of keeping digital material alive so that they remain usable as technological advances render original hardware and software specification obsolete.
Any digital object can be considered in scope for digital preservation: born digital or digitised, corporate or personal, innovative or routine. Digital preservation can encompass texts and images, databases and spreadsheets, vectors or rasters, programs and applications, desktop files and enterprise systems, email and social media, games, movies, music and sound, entire web domains and individual tweets. Digital collections can derive from laptops or desktops or smart phones; from tablets, souped-up servers or hulking great mainframes. They can be snapped at the end of a selfie stick or beamed from sensors deep in space; they can be generated by tills and cash machines, by satellites and scanners, by tiny sensitive chips and massive arrays. They can be stored in repositories or data centres or USB sticks. There is no digital object or system that is not provisionally within scope for digital preservation.
Pervasive, changing and ubiquitous, digital technologies are a defining feature of our age. Digital materials are a core commodity for industry, commerce and government. They are fundamental for research, the law and medicine. The creative industries, cultural heritage and the media depend on reliable access to digital materials while families and friends extend and sustain their relationships through digital interactions.
But digital materials – and the opportunities they create – are fragile even if they also have the capacity to be durable through replication. Digital platforms change and the long chains of interdependence on which they depend are complicated and fluid. Their longevity and utility is threatened where contents or contexts are lost: engagement and exploitation are enabled when digital materials endure. The greater the importance of digital materials, the greater the need for their preservation: digital preservation protects investment, captures potential and transmits opportunities to future generations and our own.
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Sources: Wikipedia, DCPonline.org
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