Feature
Miguel Ángel Márdero Arellano Co-ordinator of the Cariniana Network IBICT, Brazil
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Unesco and the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) published an Executive Guide on Digital Preservation in May last year. In your view, what are the challenges of international co-operation on digital preservation, and how can digital preservation programmes be more inclusive? At the international level, collaborative and distributed digital preservation networks help maintain information access services for libraries and archives that are at risk of losing their digital content. The Distributed Digital Preservation (DDP) approach proposes the creation of distributed copies in digital archives on geographically dispersed servers, to ensure their survival in the face of risks of loss and destruction of important digital collections. This model of collaboration has the challenge of supporting secure storage options and public and restricted access. In Latin American countries, the
commitment of government agencies to open access content preservation programmes depends on the level that these agencies have achieved in monitoring the materials that are deposited in the information systems maintained by the state. Also, on the role that it confers on institutions at the national level to co-ordinate initiatives for open access to scientific and cultural information. The sustainability of inclusive actions comes from the financial and human resource support that governments provide to programmes through their federal funding agencies.
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? In Brazil, there are many digital collections of significant historical, scientific, artistic, cultural and environmental value that urgently require the establishment of uniform and efficient methods for their mapping and preservation. Libraries and archives have opted for the use of digital repositories to organise and provide access to the scientific and cultural
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production of teaching and research institutions. Most collections are open access and can be archived in digital preservation systems. The Brazilian Institute of Information on Science and Technology (IBICT) is an agency supported by the Brazilian government that has recommended the use of open source tools and the commitment of institutions to preserve long-term access to this production, as stated in policies and plans for digital preservation. The Brazilian Network of Digital Preservation Services – Cariniana – is a consortium co-ordinated by IBICT that promotes distributed preservation and the implementation of archiving and digital curation techniques in partner institutions. Rede Cariniana also disseminates methodologies to adopt best practices for risk prevention and internationally recommended contingency plans.
It is important to validate best practices in the field of digital archiving and there are several certifications such as TRAC metrics, CoreTrustSeal, Nestor Seal for Trustworthy Digital Archives. Should certification be mandatory at the national, or even international level? Evaluations, audits and certifications can be considered one of the main methods for defining reliable repositories, since they depend on the evaluation of specialists who define the security and reliability of information systems. There is a general consensus in the Digital Preservation community that auditing and certification are welcome and there are many organisations that have expressed in their policies their intention to get certified in the coming years. Complying with these mandatory
requirements to preserve growing, valuable and at-risk digital collections helps repository managers to focus and refine operational policies, highlight opportunities for development, and assess the risks associated with gaps in repository funding. Auditing and certification tools create
a more complete picture of the role of repositories in digital object management, from the time of acquisition and creation
of metadata, to storage and planning of preservation metadata schema strategies.
The OAIS standard is the cornerstone of electronic archiving. Are there any other recommendations or standards that are particularly important, and is your organisation implementing them? All efforts to develop standards regarding digital preservation aim at ensuring that information contained in preservation systems remains accessible over a long period of time. In Brazil, IBICT is committed to the adoption of preservation systems based on the OAIS model. Our partner institutions within the Cariniana network have developed classification schemes for support functions, appraisal schedules and controlled vocabularies, to monitor the types of documents produced by the participating institutions, define the archiving period of the documents and specify their final destination. In Brazil, resolutions 39 and 43 of the Committee for National Archives (http://
conarq.gov.br/resolucoes-do-conarq.html) consider digital repositories as the sole organisations responsible for the storage and management of digital documents. According to these resolutions,
repositories must manage documents and metadata according to the practices and standards of archival science, specifically related to document management, description and preservation at various levels. One recommendation states that systems should be designed in accordance with conventions and standards such as ISO 16363, which specifies guidelines for assessing and certifying repositories. Ri
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