04/10/23 1

Practical steps towards digital preservation at

institutional levels

Chris Rusbridge

04/10/23 2

Contents

• Who has responsibility?• When?• What?• CDocS example

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Who has responsibility?

• National bodies?– National & copyright libraries?– JISC? AHDS etc?

• Consortia, membership organisations?– CURL, RLG?– Regional groups?

• Commercial operations?– OCLC, NDAD?

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Institutional responsibility?

• Local scholarly material• Learning materials• Institutional records• Experimental data & notebooks• Licensed material??

• Might be out-sourced

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When?

• Short term– Think! Avoid stupid things!!

• Medium term– Review requirements– Ensure you can keep bits– Plan

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When?

• Long term– Pilot– Modify– Deploy– Expand– Review

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What?• Digitised stuff

– not a priority– think about metadata & formats

• Databases– think about meaning, codes,

consistency

• Web pages– think about value, significant

properties etc

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What?• Documents

– less significant if paper files exist

• Records– decisions, minutes, proposals, policies– may be documents, may be email,

may be memos, often mixed!– Legal obligations exist (to keep & to

destroy)– PROBLEM AREA

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CDocS example

• Committee Document System• Collects metadata automatically• Produces documents in XML• Documents prepared in Word

(with macros)• Documents viewable on web in

HTML, or in Word formats