European Commission on Preservation and Access Preservation of digital heritage Yola de Lusenet Lisbon, November

European Commission on Preservation and Access So much information....  1-2 billion Gigabytes per year  wide variety of materials  new media, new roles, new responsibilities  what needs to be preserved and by whom?

European Commission on Preservation and Access The good old days...  legal frameworks support preservation  deposit of print materials  legislation for appraisal and preservation of records  specialized archives for specific materials (film, sound, broadcasting)

European Commission on Preservation and Access A bright new world?  media have become mixed  content and functionality to deal with  information evolves: versions, updates  no fixed categories  databases and dynamic websites  information distributed over different localities

European Commission on Preservation and Access Publishing on the web?  no filtering mechanism of publishers and official organizations  lots of ‘official publications’ also on the web but..  also lots of garbage and...  lots of valuable stuff by individuals or informal interest groups  cultural activity creates potential heritage

European Commission on Preservation and Access “Preservation of digital heritage”?  dealing with the heritage of the future  preservation starts early in life cycle  generation of soft- and hardware only a few years  time frame for preservation has shrunk: in the digital world, five years is ‘long term’

European Commission on Preservation and Access Facts about digital  need to keep up with technological change  information is changed all the time  the short life of a website: average from 44 days to 2 years

European Commission on Preservation and Access Records on the web?  no fixed object to preserve  what is a record anyway?  records will change when moved to new environments  which are the significant properties of an authentic record?  which web materials are records-in-disguise?

European Commission on Preservation and Access What is being done?  extend legal deposit to electronic materials  voluntary deposit for on-line publications  preserving selected websites as ‘publications’  preserving selected websites as ‘records’

European Commission on Preservation and Access Harvesting the web  comprehensive approach  no selection for content  the whole web: the Internet Archive  selection by ‘nationality’: Sweden, Finland

European Commission on Preservation and Access Saving or preserving websites?  links are broken  dynamic materials: the ‘Deep Web’  interactive features  we save a snapshot of the web but: saving is not preservation

European Commission on Preservation and Access What should be preserved?  media  bit stream  information  functionality  look-and-feel over time, something is bound to be lost

European Commission on Preservation and Access Essentials  Integrity: the material is complete and undamaged  Authenticity: the material is what we believe it to be  Protection against intentional change against accidental change

European Commission on Preservation and Access The way of the world  digital materials are not fixed  environments in which they function change Choice between  moving forward to new environments? new functionality, new user expectations  freeze material as is? historical context, look-and-feel of ‘original’

European Commission on Preservation and Access Describing is knowing  adequate representation depends on good documentation: of file formats of software and hardware of context, ‘provenance’ of changes, conversions authenticity checks also known as ‘metadata’

European Commission on Preservation and Access Metadata  Administrative e.g. rights and legal access  Descriptive e.g. cataloguing and finding aids  Preservation e.g. data refreshing and migration  Technical e.g. hardware and software documentation, formats, compression ratios  Use: e.g. content re-use, multiversioning From Anne J. Gilliland-Swetland in: Introduction to metadata

European Commission on Preservation and Access Shift in preservation  only preserving the object is pointless  metadata help to maintain access  documentation is preservation activity  preservation is providing conditions for future representation preservation of access

European Commission on Preservation and Access Technology follows  ‘any technological choice we make has inescapable implications for what will (and will not) be preserved. In the digital case, we must choose what to lose’, Rothenberg and Bikson  Jeff Rothenberg and Tora Bikson Carrying Authentic, Understandable and Usable Digital Records Through Time. Report to the Dutch National Archives and Ministry of the Interior, 1999, p.6.

European Commission on Preservation and Access Technological basics  media deteriorate or get outdated: transfer to new media is essential  software becomes obsolete: migration to new platforms is inevitable  proprietary software is a ‘black box’ standards are helpful

European Commission on Preservation and Access Tasks of heritage sector  Select what needs to be preserved  Define user requirements for long term  Create frameworks for division of responsibilities  Provide guidance for creators of information

European Commission on Preservation and Access Copyright -the c-word  all copying strictly speaking illegal  exemption in law for copying for preservation  agreements between libraries and publishers  but what about rights to supporting software?  what about complex multimedia applications? general exemptions are needed

European Commission on Preservation and Access We cannot wait and see..  a pro-active approach  trusted distributed repositories  divide tasks between libraries, data archives, research institutes, archives, institutions serving specific communities etc

European Commission on Preservation and Access International initiatives  EU resolution under Spanish Presidency  UNESCO resolution October 2001 now in preparation:  charter on preservation of digital heritage  technical guidelines by National Library of Australia

Digital preservation: a balancing act

European Commission on Preservation and Access For more information  PADI  GRIP  DPC  CLIR