A practical guide to the development and operation of digital preservations services for organizations of any size Practical Digital Preservation offers a comprehensive overview of best practice and is aimed at the non-specialist, assuming only a basic understanding of IT. The book provides guidance as to how to implement strategies with minimal time and resources. Digital preservation has become a critical issue for institutions of all sizes but until recently has mostly been the preserve of national archives and libraries with the resources, time and specialist knowledge available to experiment. As the discipline matures and practical tools and information are increasingly available the barriers to entry are falling for smaller organizations which can realistically start to take active steps towards a preservation strategy. However, the sheer volume of technical information now available on the subject is becoming a significant obstacle and a straightforward guide is required to offer clear and practical solutions. Each chapter in Practical Digital Preservation covers the essential building blocks of digital preservation strategy and implementation, leading the reader through the process. International case studies from organizations such as the Wellcome Library, Central Connecticut State University Library in the USA and Gloucestershire Archives in the UK illustrate how real organizations have approached the challenges of digital preservation. Key topics include: • Making the case for digital preservation • Understanding your requirements • Models for implementing a digital preservation service • Selecting and acquiring digital objects • Accessioning and ingesting digital objects • Describing digital objects • Preserving digital objects • Providing access to users • Future trends. Readership: Anyone involved in digital preservation and those wanting to get a better understanding of the process, students studying library and information science (LIS), archives and records management courses and academics getting to grips with practical issues.

There is growing recognition of the need to address the fragility of digital information, on which our society heavily depends for smooth operation in all aspects of daily life. This has been discussed in many books and articles on digital preservation, so why is there a need for yet one more? Because, for the most part, those other publications focus on documents, images and webpages – objects that are normally rendered to be simply displayed by software to a human viewer. Yet there are clearly many more types of digital objects that may need to be preserved, such as databases, scientific data and software itself. David Giaretta, Director of the Alliance for Permanent Access, and his contributors explain why the tools and techniques used for preserving rendered objects are inadequate for all these other types of digital objects, and they provide the concepts, techniques and tools that are needed. The book is structured in three parts. The first part is on theory, i.e., the concepts and techniques that are essential for preserving digitally encoded information. The second part then shows practice, i.e., the use and validation of these tools and techniques. Finally, the third part concludes by addressing how to judge whether money is being well spent, in terms of effectiveness and cost sharing. Various examples of digital objects from many sources are used to explain the tools and techniques presented. The presentation style mainly aims at practitioners in libraries, archives and industry who are either directly responsible for preservation or who need to prepare for audits of their archives. Researchers in digital preservation and developers of preservation tools and techniques will also find valuable practical information here. Researchers creating digitally encoded information of all kinds will also need to be aware of these topics so that they can help to ensure that their data is usable and can be valued by others now and in the future. To further assist the reader, the book is supported by many hours of videos and presentations from the CASPAR project and by a set of open source software.

This new edition of Digital Preservation in Libraries, Archives, and Museums is the most current, complete guide to digital preservation available today. For administrators and practitioners alike, the information in this book is presented readably, focusing on management issues and best practices. Although this book addresses technology, it is not solely focused on technology. After all, technology changes and digital preservation is aimed for the long term. This is not a how-to book giving step-by-step processes for certain materials in a given kind of system. Instead, it addresses a broad group of resources that could be housed in any number of digital preservation systems. Finally, this book is about “things (not technology; not how-to; not theory) I wish I knew before I got started.” Digital preservation is concerned with the life cycle of the digital object in a robust and all-inclusive way. Many Europeans and some North Americans may refer to digital curation to mean the same thing, taking digital preservation to be the very limited steps and processes needed to insure access over the long term. The authors take digital preservation in the broadest sense of the term: looking at all aspects of curating and preserving digital content for long term access. The book is divided into four part: 1.Situating Digital Preservation, 2.Management Aspects, 3.Technology Aspects, and 4.Content-Related Aspects. Digital Preservation will answer questions that you might not have even known you had, leading to more successful digital preservation initiatives.

Digital preservation is an issue faced by practitioners in Ross Harveythe library and recordkeeping professions, yet most professionalshave little time to keep up with the latest techniquesand standards. This invaluable work provides asingle-volume introduction to the principles, strategies and practices currently applied by librarians and recordkeepers to the preservation of digital information and will assist them to make informed decisions about the role of digital information in their care.The book is presented in four parts: Why do we preserve? What do we preserve? How do we preserve? and How do we manage digital preservation?Each part covers the area in detail and addresses current issues in a clear and informative manner. The terminology of the field is explained clearly throughout the book. Each chapter includes a range of case studies from institutionsat the forefront of digital object preservation. An index facilitates quick access.This book will be essential as a professional reference tool for all librarians, recordkeepers and archivists with preservation responsibilities as well as being a definitive source of information for the whole profession including students.

Who could be partners to archivists working in digital preservation? This book features chapters from international contributors from diverse backgrounds and professions discussing their challenges with and victories over digital problems that share common issues with those facing digital preservationists. The only certainty about technology is that it will change. The speed of that change, and the ever increasing diversity of digital formats, tools, and platforms, will present stark challenges to the long-term preservation of digital records. Archivists are frequently challenged by the technical expertise, subject matter knowledge, time, and resource requirements needed to solve the broad set of challenges sure to be faced by the archival profession. Partners for Preservation advocates the need for archivists to recruit partners and learn lessons from across diverse professions to work more effectively within the digital landscape. Includes discussion of: - the internet of things - digital architecture - research data and collaboration - open source programming - privacy, memory and transparency - inheritance of digital media. This book will be useful reading for professional archivists and others responsible for digital preservation, students of archival studies and digital preservation.

Provides strategies designed to help people capture and preserve digital information in a variety of ways.