Defining Digital Preservation

Thank you all for your feedback on the definitions. The following document will be presented at the PARS Digital Preservation Discussion Group (Convention Center 143A. Sunday, June 24, 8:00 -10:00 am). Changes from the original definitions were made to refer specifically to disaster plan maintenance and testing and digital content rather than formats.

The word of most discussion and least change was "rendering," which the group has decided to keep as it was initially presented for the live discussion at the conference. As a result of the discussion about this concept on-line and amongst the group, we crafted a preamble to frame more clearly our intentions and make explicit how we understand digital preservation with the PARS community aligns with the full range of practice. The remainder of this post contains that preamble and the revised definition.

Thank you again for all of your input. After the conference conference, I'll post another update on the discussion from the conference and the approval process.

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Digital preservation combines policies, strategies and actions that ensure access to information in digital formats over time.

Digital preservation 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.

Digital preservation combines policies, strategies and actions to ensure the accurate rendering of authenticated content over time, regardless of the challenges of media failure and technological change. Digital preservation applies to both born digital and reformatted content.

Digital preservation policies document an organization’s commitment to preserve digital content for future use; specify file formats to be preserved and the level of preservation to be provided; and ensure compliance with standards and best practices for responsible stewardship of digital information.

Digital preservation strategies and actions address content creation, integrity and maintenance.

Content creation includes:

• Clear and complete technical specifications
• Production of reliable master files
• Sufficient descriptive, administrative and structural metadata to ensure future access
• Detailed quality control of processes

Content integrity includes:

• Documentation of all policies, strategies and procedures
• Use of persistent identifiers
• Recorded provenance and change history for all objects
• Verification mechanisms
• Attention to security requirements
• Routine audits

Content maintenance includes:

• A robust computing and networking infrastructure
• Storage and synchronization of files at multiple sites
• Continuous monitoring and management of files
• Programs for refreshing, migration and emulation
• Written disaster prevention and recovery plans
• Periodic review and updating of policies and procedures