Digital Preservation: The Test of Time

1

• Digital Preservation The Test of Time
• Priscilla Caplan, FCLA

2
Archiving and Preservation
Authenticity
Renderability
Viability
Fixity
Understandability
Identity
Availability
3
availability

• You cant preserve what you dont physically
  control.
• Methods for gaining physical control of digital
  materials
• Web harvesting
• Institutional repositories
• Shared repositories like the Aquatic Commons

4
identity

• It might be possible to preserve something if you
  dont know what it is, but it wouldnt be very
  useful.
• Persistent identifiers
• Descriptive metadata, e.g. MARC or Dublin
  Core
• Relationships to other objects
• Context

5
understandability

• Will a likely future user of this object have the
  information necessary to interpret it?
• Syntax information (structure)
• Semantic information (content)
• For example, codebooks for survey data, database
  schema for datasets.

6
fixity

• The quality of not being unintentionally altered
  or deleted.
• Threatened by insecure storage, transmission
  errors, media degredation.
• Methods for ensuring fixity include
• Sound storage management
• Media refreshment
• Calculating and checking checksums

7
viability

• The quality of being readable from media.
• Threatened by media degredation and media
  obsolescence.
• Methods to ensure viability include
• Media refreshment
• Media migration

8
renderability

• The quality of being displayable or otherwise
  usable.
• Threatened by digital file format format
  obsolescence.
• Methods to ensure renderability include
• Maintaining old hardware and software
• Emulating old hardware and software
• Reformatting

9
authenticity

• The quality that the object is what it purports
  to be.
• Both the source and the content must be
  verifiable.
• Methods to ensure authenticity is not
  compromised
• Maintaining complete event history and chain of
  custody
• Documentable fixity

10
Archiving and Preservation
Digital provenance
Authenticity
Format strategies
Renderability
Media Management
Viability
Fixity
Secure Storage
Understandability
Documentation
Identity
Description
Selection/Capture
Availability
11
Archiving and Preservation
Digital provenance
Authenticity
Format strategies
Renderability
Media Management
Viability
Fixity
Secure Storage
Understandability
Documentation
Identity
Description
Selection/Capture
Availability
12
Archiving and Preservation
Digital provenance
Authenticity
Format strategies
Renderability
Media Management
Viability
Fixity
Secure Storage
Understandability
Documentation
Identity
Description
Selection/Capture
Availability
13
Archiving and Preservation
Digital provenance
Authenticity
Format strategies
Renderability
Media Management
Viability
Fixity
Secure Storage
Understandability
Documentation
Identity
Description
Selection/Capture
Availability
14
(No Transcript)
15

• pcaplan_at_ufl.edu
• www.fcla.edu/digitalArchive