Digital Preservation: A Necessary
Preservation Technique in Modern Era.
Animesh Bhattacharyya
Librarian,
Vivekananda Mahavidyalaya
Haripal,Hooghly.
animesh.aani@gmail.com
Sourav Chatterjee
Librarian,
Ranaghat College
Ranaghat,Nadia-741201
chatterjeeissourav@gmail.com
A Library holds and preserves the priceless
heritage of mankind-such as facts, ideas,
thoughts and different evidences of human
development in different areas, ages and
directions.
Digital preservation
“Digital preservation is the management
of digital information over time.
Preservation of digital information is
widely considered to require more
constant and ongoing attention than
preservation of other media”.
(Wikipedia)
Purpose of digital Preservation

Digital documents are vulnerable to loss
because of obsolescence of the media
on which they stored, and they become
in accessible and unreadable due to
obsolescence of software and hardware.
Problems of digital preservation

The information in digital forms make it
easy to create content and keep it up to
date but at the same time brings many
difficulties in the preservation of this
content.
Challenges for preserving
digital information

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
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Changes in an organisation.
Content reorganisation.
Cessation of sponsorship.
Technological obsolescence.
Content format obsolescence.
Hacking and sabotage.
Disaster.
Technological obsolescence.
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Digital data requires various layers of
technological mediation before they can
be understood by the user.
It can be divided in two ways
Hardware Problems
Software problems
Preservation strategies

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Assessing the risks for loss of content posed by technology
variables such as commonly used proprietary file formats and
software applications.
Evaluating the digital content objects to determine what type
and degree of format conversion or other preservation actions
should be applied.

Determining the appropriate metadata needed for each object
type and how it is associated with the objects.

Providing access to the content.
Additional strategies

Data creators and Publishers
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Intellectual Property Right(IPR)
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Collection Management
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Staff expertise
Methods of preservation
1. Technology preservation
This proposes that digital data should be preserved on a stable medium
with associated copies of the original application software, operating
system ands relevant hardware devices. This approach actually
suggests that the material as well as rthe technology need to be
preserved. This is not a practical approach in for data preaservation as
it is financially unfeasible to go for regular media refreshing.
2. Emulation
This relies on the preservation of the data in original format and
proposes to build emulator programs that would mimic the obsolate
hardware and software. In otherword this is the process of re-creation
of hardware and software environment necessary to access a digital
resource. This concept mainly emphasis on software related with data.
Contd..
Methods of preservation
3. Migration
Migration is a process that involves periodically moving files and
digital objects from one hardware and software configaration to
another, or from one generation technology to modern
generationof computer technology as to preserve the digital
information for future use. Migration also involves change in the
configaration of the underlying data, not its intellectual
content.This process requires continuous investment on
upgradation of technology to maintain acess the old digital
information.
4. Refreshing
Refreshing involves the periodic transfer of data from one
physical storage medium to another to avoid the obsolescence
of that medium.Sometimes new technology is unable to acess
the older storage medium so, refreshing is necessary to achieve
longivity.
Methods of preservation
5. Archeology.
Data archaeology is the process of recovery of data
later on, using up-graded techniques available in
future.This is essential for those digital information
that has not been migrated but still vital in
respective field.In this process data would be
refreshed regularly but no migration would be
performed and no software and hardware would be
preserved to be emulated at a later storage.
conclusion
Preservation of document is nothing but
the preservation of knowledge for
future use. It is a challenging task for
librarians. Digital preservation is a costintensive activity of continuing nature.
continuous self development through
workshops,trainings etc are needed to
meet the challenges in digital
environment
Thank you.