DigitalData

Preservation
Abhishek Singh
Aditya Dhanraj

What is Digital document

preservation
Data preservation, or more specifically,
digital data preservation, refers to the
series of managed activities necessary
to ensure continued access to digital
materials for as long as necessary.

Need for digital preservation

Need for digital preservation

Media issues:
Currently magnetic or optical tape and disks, some
devices (e.g., memory sticks)
Examples include: CD-ROM, DVD (optical), DAT,
DLT (magnetic)
Unknown lifetimes
Subject to differences in quality or storage conditions
But relatively short lifetimes compared to paper or
good quality microform
Probably years rather than decades

Digital preservation: issues

data is maintained in the repository without

being damaged, lost or maliciously altered;
data can be found, extracted and served to a
user;
data can be interpreted and understood by
the user; and
the above can be achieved in the long term.

Digital preservation process

Organisational

Managerial and

Technical

SHPT School of Library Science

Organisational issues:
digital preservation policy

Justification for preservation

Organisational and financial commitment
Preservation of authentic resources and
quality control
Metadata creation
High-level identification of roles and
responsibilities
Training and education
.

Managerial issues
preservation planning
developing strategy
taking sole responsibility for
preservation
dealing with IT staff or external
preservation service providers

Methods of digital preservation

Bitstream Copying
Durable, Persistent Media
Standards
Migration
Emulation
Encapsulation
Preservation Metadata

/.

Bitstream Copying
or backing up
data, where you
make a duplicate
of the digital object.

Preservation Metadata
describes the
software, hardware and
requirements of the
digital object to use in
preserving the object.
Encapsulation as
part of an emulation
strategy, where objects
and
metadata are grouped
together to help decode
and render object later.

Emulation process of
reproducing software and
hardware
environments to translate
code from one computing
environment to run
on another.

Preservation
strategies

Standards relies
on recognized, longterm standards over
proprietary formats.

Durable, Persistent
Media where you
preserve the
physical media,
or CD, on which the
object is stored.

Migration where you

copy data from one
technology to another to
avoid obsolescence of
both the physical media
and the data format.

Technology emulation
Preserving the original bit-streams and application
software; running this on emulator programs that
mimic the behaviour of obsolete hardware
Emulators change over time

Chaining, rehosting
Emulation Virtual Machines
Running emulators on simplified 'virtual machines'
that can be run on a range of different platforms
Virtual machines are migrated so the original bitstreams do not have to be

Benefits:

Technique already widely used, e.g. for emulating

different hardware, computer games
Preserves the original bits
Reduces the need for regular object transformations (but
emulators and virtual machines may themselves need to
be migrated)
Retains look-and-feel
May be the only approach possible where objects are
complex or dependent on executable code
Less 'understanding' of formats is needed; little
incremental cost in keeping additional formats

Issues:
Which

organisations have the technical

skills necessary to implement the
strategy?
Preserving 'look and feel' may not be
needed for all objects
It will be difficult to know definitively
whether user experience has been
accurately preserved

Conclusions:
Promising

family of approaches
Needs further practical application and
research

1999 BBC news via IE 4.01 on windows

Ilye Kreymars oldweb.today emulates range of browsers

challenges of digital
preservation
Technology obsolescence
Absence of established standards,
protocols, and proven methods for
preserving digital information
technological or economic feasibility of
operating on a mass scale

Thank You !!