Digital preservation

Selecting digital materials to be preserved

Collecting institutions such as the National Library of Australia make responsible decisions about what enters their collections and what they will seek to preserve for long-term access. These decisions apply to digital collections as much as to non-digital ones, even though the means of collecting, preserving and providing access may be very different.

Digital preservation hinges on selection decisions, because they imply responsibility. Generally speaking, unless someone accepts responsibility for their preservation, digital materials will not survive.

The approaches to selecting materials that the Library will preserve depend on the digital collection to which they belong or could belong:

  • for the PANDORA archive of Australian online publications, selection decisions are guided by detailed selection guidelines.
  • for Australian physical format digital publications, preservation decisions are guided by detailed guidelines.
  • for digital audio items and their transcripts, all items collected are selected for preservation.
  • for preservation master copies of collection materials generated by the Library’s digitisation program, all items are selected for preservation.
  • for unpublished computer files deposited in the Library’s Manuscripts collection, selection decisions are made on a case by case basis, depending on what is known about the material, its expected uniqueness and significance, and the technical difficulties of transferring or retrieving data.
  • for original digital images acquired for the Pictures collection, all items are selected for preservation.
  • for digital spatial data sets and mapping resources acquired for the Maps collection, a basis for selection decisions is still being developed.
  • for the Library’s corporate records in digital form, selection decisions are guided by a records disposal schedule approved by the National Archives of Australia.
  • for information resources listed on the PADI subject gateway, ‘Safekeeping’ selection decisions are guided by detailed guidelines.
  • for metadata records of information resources that are required for long-term retention, all items are selected for preservation.

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