The Good Digital Preservation Practice Guide

Digital preservation is now widely acknowledged as an area that organizations must engage with. For those living in networked societies the world has been digital for some years and there is a growing awareness of the need to plan for digital sustainability rather than expect that important material will naturally endure. What remains un-clear is: who should be responsible for all this work; how should we pay for it; and, What should we try to preserve? These and a number of other related issues will be addressed in this book. The guiding principle of this book is that good preservation practice begins with effective policy and so it examines broadly strategic themes rather than technical solutions. Put together by an international, cross-sectoral team of contributors, each authored chapter provides a snapshot of where we are now and what barriers need to be overcome. They also provide several in-depth case studies which delve into their own experience to illustrate the essential concepts. It includes key chapters such as: reappraising the digital archive; preservation in context; What is at stake? Roles and responsibilities; building effective partnerships; tools and processes; training and professional development; personal archiving; legal and ethical aspects of preservation; and, reflections on next steps. This authoritative text is essential reading for information managers, librarians and archivists worldwide. Others in the information and culture world such as museum curators, media professionals and web content providers, will also find it essential reading, as will students.

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.

Scholars and scrapbookers alike need your help with saving their most important digital content. But how do you translate your professional knowledge as a librarian or archivist into practical skills that novices can apply to their own projects? The Complete Guide to Personal Archiving will show you the way, helping you break down archival concepts and best practices into teachable solutions for your patrons’ projects. Whether it’s a researcher needing to cull their most important email correspondence, or an empty-nester transferring home movies and photographs to more easily shared and mixed digital formats, this book will show you how to offer assistance, providing explanations of common terms in plain language;quick, non-technical solutions to frequent patron requests;a look at the 3-2-1 approach to backing up files;guidance on how to archive Facebook posts and other social media;methods for capturing analog video from obsolete physical carriers like MiniDV;proven workflows for public facing transfer stations, as used at the Washington, D.C. Memory Lab and the Queens Library mobile scanning unit;talking points to help seniors make proactive decisions about their digital estates;perspectives on balancing core library values with the business goals of Google, Amazon, Facebook, and other dominant platforms; andadditional resources for digging deep into personal digital archiving. Featuring expert contributors working in a variety of contexts, this resource will help you help your patrons take charge of their personal materials.

Digital preservation is an issue of huge importance to the library and information profession right now. With the widescale adoption of the internet and the rise of the WWW, the world has been overwhelmed by digital information. Digital data is being produced on a massive scale by individuals and institutions: some of it is born, lives and dies only in digital form, and it is the potential death of this data that is the concern of this volume. So how can information professionals try to remedy this situation? Digital preservation is a complex issue, with many different aspects and views, so in this book each chapter is written by an international expert on the topic. Many case studies and examples are used to ground the ideas and theories in real concerns and practice. This volume will arm the information professional with the knowledge they need about this important and pressing issue and give examples of best practice to help find a way to a solution for this problem. Chapters cover: formats of digital data authenticity of digital data preservation strategies international trends in digital preservation web archiving metadata institutional policies the cost of digital preservation and cost of data loss. Written by leading international experts in digital library development, each book in the Digital Futures series examines in detail some of the key strategic and practical issues facing libraries and other cultural institutions in the rapidly expanding world of digital information. Readership: This is an indispensable guide for all information managers, librarians and archivists. Others in the information and culture world, such as museum curators, media professionals and web content providers will also find it essential reading, as will students of digital culture on library and information studies and other courses.

This book provides a single-volume introduction to the principles, strategies and practices currently applied by librarians and recordkeeping professionals to the critical issue of preservation of digital information. It incorporates practice from both the recordkeeping and the library communities, taking stock of current knowledge about digital preservation and describing recent and current research, to provide a framework for reflecting on the issues that digital preservation raises in professional practice.

A wide variety of organizations are both creating and retaining digital data from archaeological projects. While current methods for preservation and access to data vary widely, nearly all of these organizations agree that careful management of digital archaeological resources is an important aspect of responsible archaeological stewardship. This guide provides information on the best way to create, manage, and document digital data files produced during the course of an archaeological project and aims to improve the practice of depositing and preserving digital information safely within an archive for future use. It is structured in three main parts: Digital Archiving - looks at the fundamentals of digital preservation and covers general preservation themes within the context of archaeological investigations, research, and resource management, with an overview of digital archiving practice and guidance; The Project Lifecycle - looks at common project lifecycle elements such as file naming, metadata creation, and copyright and covers general, broad themes that should be considered at the outset of a project; Basic Components - looks at selected technique and file type-specific issues together with archive structuring and deposit. This section covers common file types that are frequently present in archaeological archives, irrespective of a project's primary technique or focus.

The Digital Archives Handbook provides archivists a roadmap to create and care for digital archives. Written by archival experts and practitioners, Purcell brings together theoretical and practical approaches to creating, managing, and preserving digital archives. The first section is focused on processes and practices, including chapters on acquisitions, appraisal, arrangement, description, delivery, preservation, forensics, curation, and intellectual property. The second section is focused on digital collections and specific environments where archivists are managing digital collections. These chapters review digital collections in categories including performing arts, oral history, architectural and design records, congressional collections, and email. The book discuss the core components of digital archives—the technological infrastructure that provides storage, access, and long-term preservation; the people or organizations that create or donate digital material to archives programs, as well as the researchers use them; and the digital collections themselves, full of significant research content in a variety of formats with a multitude of research possibilities. The chapters emphasize that the people and the collections that make up digital archives are just as important as the technology. Also highlighted are the importance of donors and creators of digital archives. Building digital archives parallels the cycle of donor work—planning, cultivation, and stewardship. During each stage, archivists work with donors to ensure that the digital collections will be arranged, described, preserved, and made accessible for years to come. Archivists must take proactive and informed actions to build valuable digital collections. Knowing where digital materials come from, how those materials were created, what materials are important, what formats or topical areas are included, and how to serve those collections to researchers in the long term is central to archival work. This handbook is designed to generate new discussions about how archivists of the twenty-first century can overcome current challenges and chart paths that anticipate, rather than merely react to, future donations of digital archives.

This important book is the first to offer practical guidance to information management professionals seeking to implement web archiving programmes of their own. It is essential reading for those who need to collect and preserve specific elements of the web - from national domains or individual subject areas to an organization's own website. Drawing on the author's experience of managing the National Archives' web archiving programme, together with lessons learned from other international initiatives, this book provides a comprehensive overview of current best practice. It assumes only a basic understanding of IT and web technologies, but also offers much to more technically-oriented readers. Contents include: the development of web archiving selection policies collection methods quality assurance preservation delivery to user optimizing websites for archiving legislation managing a web archiving programme future trends. Readership: Written to address audiences from the whole spectrum of information management sectors, this book is vital reading for three types of reader: policy-makers, who need to make decisions about establishing or developing an institutional web archiving programme; information management professionals, who may be required to implement a web archiving programme; and website owners and web masters, who may be required to facilitate archiving of their own websites.