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preservation
Digital preservation
See also:
PANDORA |
PADI
Purpose
The purpose of this page is to provide information about the
National Library of Australias approaches to preserving its digital
collections and about its digital preservation activities.
The National Library defines digital preservation as the
processes involved in maintaining the required level of accessibility of
digital objects over time. The Library believes that this involves a
number of critical elements concerning how digital
materials are created, selected, transferred, described, and managed.
Within the National Library, the major focus of identifying,
collecting and describing digital publications is the archiving of online
Australian publications into PANDORA, Australias Web Archive. A great
deal of information about these steps as they relate to PANDORA can be found on
the PANDORA web site.
As well as collecting digital materials and managing them for
current access, the National Library is strongly committed to ensuring long
term access to those digital collections for which it accepts preservation
responsibility. To this end, the National Library:
- aims to know certain key management
information about its digital collections.
- has developed a Digital
Preservation Policy which sets out the principles that guide its
digital preservation activities.
- has undertaken a detailed risk
assessment for its digital collections.
- uses an evolving Digital Preservation Action Plan to
prioritise and direct its digital preservation work. (A public version will be
made available from this website.)
- has a long-standing program of projects to develop
tools, procedures and infrastructure to manage the
preservation of its digital collections.
- has a long-standing commitment to working with others in
developing ways to address its digital preservation responsibilities. Many of
these are described under Collaboration on the
PANDORA web site. In terms of long-term
preservation, the National Librarys collaboration priorities for the
period 2004-2006 focus on the Australian Partnership for Sustainable
Repositories (APSR), and
investigating the feasibility of a national digital preservation
practitioners network.
- uses a range of means to share information about digital
preservation. The most significant of these is the
PADI subject gateway (Preserving Access to
Digital Information) which is hosted and maintained by the National Library of
Australia. The Library is an active member of the International Association of
Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA) and in 2004 a senior member of the
Librarys digital preservation team led the preparation of Guidelines
on the Production and Preservation of Digital Audio Objects. The Library
also made a significant contribution to the
Digital
Heritage campaign of UNESCO, preparing Guidelines on Preservation of
Digital Heritage, assisting in the drafting of a Charter, and organising a
regional consultation meeting for Asia and the Pacific in 2002. The Library is
a designated Regional Centre for South East Asia and Oceania for IFLA PAC, and
a designated IFLA PAC centre of excellence in digital preservation.
Further information about the National Library of Australias
digital preservation activities is available from a number of current
staff papers prepared for publication or conference
presentation.

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