Digital Preservation - Libraries of the Future
Digital preservation is a strategic and collaborative undertaking requiring a range of approaches and skills and the active involvement of library, administrative, technical and managerial staff roles at various levels of responsibility. Librarians are at the heart of these collaborative networks, building on already-established infrastructure and communication channels, and helping to ensure that digital preservation is mainstreamed as an institutional priority.
This commitment to preservation means that the shift towards electronic working, along with all the benefits that it entails, Librarians are at the heart of helping to ensure digital preservation is mainstreamed as an institutional prioritycan be advocated with more robust assurances of the long-term sustainability of digital assets. It also means that, with the careful de-accessioning of large amounts of analogue materials, libraries have a real opportunity to rationalise and manage unwieldy collections and to offer solutions to space and accommodation issues within their institutions.
However, preservation is often not the first area of engagement for institutions which are developing approaches to digital asset management. The long-term nature of strategic preservation thinking dictates that in an environment where time and resources are limited, any actions which are perceived to be less time-critical will be deferred in preference to more immediate concerns.
There are, in addition, barriers to the mainstreaming of such activities. For example, the range and extent of technical preservation issues are poorly understood outside of the relatively small community of preservation practitioners. With obsolescence cycles being possibly five, ten, twenty or more years long, so determining the best ways of preserving certain types of material is likely to remain at a theoretical and immature level for some time. Establishing the real cost of preservation work is difficult without knowledge of the likely benefits and this uncertainty is difficult for institutions to embrace.
JISC’s preservation activities attempt to engage with librarians and others to address these and other challenges, to explore solutions to institutional barriers to the mainstreaming of such activities and, through a range of channels, to provide support, advice and guidance.