ProfilePreservation
Preservation community calls for
action to safeguard information
Siân Harris reports from the
iPRES 2008 conference
‘There is an opportunity for Europe and the
world. Let’s not wait until the last moment. Our
children and grandchildren will be grateful.’
These stirring words from Horst Forster, the
director responsible for digital content and
cognitive systems in the European Commission’s
Directorate General for Information Society and
Media, were part of his keynote speech at the
recent iPRES event held at the British Library.
Forster was speaking about digital preservation
and, as the conference sessions continued, the Experts discuss the issues surrounding digital preservation at the iPRES 2008 conference at the British Library.
enormity of the task he referred to was revealed.
‘While born digital content is emerging in all preserves what, how and for how long.’ ‘There would be a real benefit in standardising
areas, ways to preserve it are far behind,’ he said. The sheer volume of data to collect and the a single tool capable of identification, validation
The first problem is that there seems to rate that new data is being created makes this a and extraction,’ noted Knight.
be a lack of interest or understanding about big task. Forster noted that already the amount There are also, inevitably, costs involved.
preservation. Forster pointed out that the role of data globally runs to 21 zeros – and this could The European Union recently announced that
of digital curator has not really been defined be 10 or even 50 times greater in 10 years’ time. in 2009-2010, null69 million from its research
yet and there are very few specialist training According to Thorsteinn Hallgrimsson, deputy programme will go to digitisation activities and
programmes in this area. And, although the national librarian of the National and University the development of digital libraries. Europe’s
delegates at this international meeting were Library of Iceland, his country’s archive of its web competitive and innovation programme will
passionate about preservation and experts in pages already equates to 400 million documents also allocate about null50 million to improve
this topic, their numbers were fairly small. Some ‘and we are a very small country,’ he added. access to Europe’s cultural content. However,
delegates also remarked that they struggle to With so much information, especially on the EU urged its member states to invest in
find independent experts to review their project websites, it is difficult to know what to save. ‘The digitisation and preservation themselves, noting
proposals because almost everyone they know in that the total cost of digitising five million
the field is connected with the particular project
‘There seems to be a
books in Europe’s libraries is already estimated at
or committee in some way already.
‘It’s great to meet at conferences, but we really
lack of understanding
approximately null225 million.
Such efforts will also require organisations
need to get out and talk about preservation to the
about preservation’
and countries to work together. The sub-
wider community,’ observed Martha Anderson, heading of the iPRES08 conference was ‘Joined
director of NDIPP program management at the increasing numbers of replicas of documents raises up and working: Tools and Methods for Digital
US National Library of Congress. the question of which is the definitive record. Preservation’, but many of the discussions at
There are challenges with doing this though. It is important to reflect this in certification the meeting revealed that this does not quite
‘We have a problem with language in this approaches,’ noted Forster. Another issue is describe the situation today. ‘There’s a certain
domain at the moment,’ commented Steve how to ensure the widest possible access given amount of competition for resources. Often,
Knight, associate director of the National the different copyright conditions attached to institutions want to stand out alone and shine,’
Digital Library, and programme architect of materials. ‘You have to talk about access. How observed Anderson, although a delegate from
the National Digital Heritage Archive at the do you know if you’ve preserved it if you can’t the LOCKSS project noted that ‘when there is
National Library of New Zealand. He suggested see it?’ agreed Anderson. a specific project to overcome, people are willing
that the term ‘permanent access’ might more ‘If the only goal was to ingest and preserve to come to the table.’
accurately communicate what the preservation digitised content in complete isolation from the ‘The idea of being “joined up” is aspirational,’
community is trying to do. other systems, then digital preservation would remarked Knight in his closing comments.
Forster said: ‘We need to agree and implement be a much simpler task,’ added Knight. ‘The problem of permanent access is only just
a coherent agenda for digital preservation – who Standards was another topic for discussion. beginning.’
12 Research Information December 2008/January 2009 www.researchinformation.info
RIdec08 pp12-13 Preservation.indd 12 17/11/08 16:53:32
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