Feature
Mark Jordan Associate dean of libraries, digital strategy, Public Knowledge Project, Canada
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Unesco and the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) published an Executive Guide on Digital Preservation in May last year. In your opinion, what are the challenges of international co-operation on digital preservation? How can digital preservation programmes be more inclusive? Given increasing environmental change (such as rising sea levels) and increasing political instability in many countries, geographic distribution of copies of content, one of the fundamental tenets of digital preservation, is becoming increasingly important but at the same time increasingly threatened by differences in international law that impinges on digital preservation. For example, some countries’s
copyright laws allow the archiving of digital content for preservation purposes, while others do not. Country-specific take-down procedures also complicate international digital preservation. In a preservation network where copies of the preserved content reside in multiple legal jurisdictions, respecting each countries’ copyright laws adds substantial administrative burden to the network, and also jeopardises the ability to synchronise copies of the content. Differences in privacy laws across
international jurisdictions have a similar impact. The lower the uniformity in participating institutions’ legal ability to store personal information in preserved content, the less consistent the replicated copies of that content will be, ultimately undermining the viability of the preservation network as a whole.
The DPC’s BitList provides an overview of digital content that is important to preserve. How does your archive contribute to the preservation of endangered content? The Public Knowledge Project Preservation Network (PKP PN) provides digital preservation to any journal running Open Journal Systems (OJS). Many OJS journals are either run independently from large publishers, or are run by institutions that do not have access to commercial preservation services for financial or other
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reasons. These journals’ content is at high risk of completely disappearing unless they join a free, low-barrier service such as the PKP PN.
It is important to validate good practices in the field of digital archiving and several certifications exist such as TRAC metrics, CoreTrustSeal, Nestor Seal for Trustworthy Digital Archives. Should certification be made compulsory at the national, or even international level? Affordable and financially sustainable certification should be mandatory. Certification is extremely important
“Differences in privacy laws across international
jurisdictions have a similar impact”
because it holds preservation services accountable for the claims they make, and for instilling trust in their designated communities. However, the very high cost of Trac certification, for example, makes it unachievable for many preservation services, even at the national level in some coutries. Achieving and maintaining certification is a real cost of digital preservation, and one that must be addressed.
The OAIS standard is the cornerstone for electronic archiving. Are there other recommendations or standards that are particularly important and is your organisation implementing them? Not currently. High-level compliance with the OAIS refererence model is sufficient for the PKP PN. We are open to implementing additional frameworks but do not currently see the need to do so.
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