Digital Preservation

Catherine Kirkland

BBC Domesday Project Domesday Book ca. 1086 Still viewable today at National Archives Digitized from 1984-86 Cost £2.5 million to produce

BBC Domesday Project Data released on 12” LV-ROM disks

that could only be read by a special BBC microcomputer

By 2000, nearly every 12” drivewas out of commission

DIGITAL DOMESDAY An important digital work had

a life-span of 14 years…from creation to obsolescence!

Digital files will last a lifetime…or five years, whichever comes first.

--Jeff Rothenberg, RAND Corporation

Long Term Digital Preservation Oxymoron? Information Age = Impermanent

information Easily accessible Easily lost

Digital Information At Risk Medical and Health Records Historical and financial records Motion pictures and television broadcasts Published periodicals both in print and online E-books and E-journals Music recordings Personal and commercial photography and

video Other artistic works

Library of Congress / NDIIPP National Digital Information Infrastructure and

Preservation Program established by Congress in 2000 (NDIIPP)

Librarian of Congress to lead planning effort to preserve “born digital” artistic works.

“Born Digital” = wholly created electronically with no analog equivalent

Preserving Creative America Kicked off April 2006 in Los Angeles 75 participants represented creative

industries, software development, education, archival institutions and publishing

Shared common vocabulary and challenges

First Questions to Answer

What should be saved? Who is responsible? Who pays?

Preserving Creative America Relative to Publishing:

Preservation of digital photography, illustration, web sites, page layouts from print magazines, newspapers and advertising

These works are valued by sociologists, historials, archivists, genealogists and researchers

Copyright Protection Copyright = Life of creator plus 70 years The nation’s most valuable historical, intellectual and cultural content may not survive its copyright protection.

Digital Asset Management Systems

Good start Only addresses storage and retrieval Don’t address updating legacy files to

current versions Don’t address cross-application

migration

Digital Preservation Challenges

Unpredictable technological development

Over 200 storage systems deployed since 1960s

None have lasted more than 10 years Numerous operating systems; several

platforms Digital data doubles every 12-18

months!

Preservation No Longer a“Just in Case” Activity Preservation requires active

management of files from the time of creation

Active Management1. Plan for preservation at job’s inception2. Update legacy files periodically to new

versions3. Convert files to new formats, if format is

becoming obsolete4. Refresh files; copy to new media.5. Create a Mac/PC “museum of hardware and

peripherals with necessary OS and applications.

The Rest of the Story…

Domesday Redux Not a total loss as feared Changing storage media identified Rescue project initiated Working hardware found! Data recovered and transferred to PC Viewer application was restored through

reverse engineering Luck and skill!

Lesson Learned If you have enough time and resources,

recovery of data is possible…provided you don’t start too late.

Domesday recovery project NOT a model

ACT NOW!