This document discusses digital preservation and common misconceptions about it. Digital preservation involves maintaining digital content, context, and metadata over time despite technological changes. It requires ongoing maintenance and migration to new formats. While challenging, digital preservation is necessary, achievable through collaboration, and can be planned for with current skills and resources. The document urges education about digital preservation and taking initial steps like collection planning and seeking funding.

1. What is Digital
Preservation?
Lynne M. Thomas
Northern Illinois University
CARLI Digital Preservation Forum
April 10, 2012

2. It is not…
• Scary
• Impossible
• Difficult to understand
• Someone else’s problem
• Anything we can’t handle…eventually.
• Something we must do all by ourselves

3. It is…
• Necessary
• Achievable
• Collaborative
• Something we can plan for long-term
• Allied with our current skill set
• Well within our mission
• Required (if you want grant money)

4. PARS (ALA) Definition
“Digital preservation combines policies, strategies
and actions to ensure access to reformatted and
born digital content regardless of the challenges
of media failure and technological change. The
goal of digital preservation is the accurate
rendering of authenticated content over time.”
Source:
http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alcts/resources/preserv/defdig
pres0408.cfm

5. Look familiar?

6. Challenges
• Digital objects can easily separate their content (the
text itself), their context (how the text is rendered on a
computer screen), and their metadata (the “title page”
of the text) from one another.
• Digital Preservation requires saving all three
components, and linking them together in perpetuity.
• Example: Excel file: content = text in each cell;
context=excel’s method of display/cell order
(proprietary); metadata=information about the file
(name, version of Excel, date of creation, etc.)

7. Challenges
• Creators of digital content often aren’t
thinking long-term. That’s our job.
• I love standards; there are so many to choose
from!

8. Misconceptions I
• Copying data to a single CD/DVD/flash
drive/external hard drive is not enough.
• “Benign Neglect” doesn’t work on digital objects.
The data will degrade unless it is continually
refreshed and checked. This is called “bit rot.”
• The Internet is Forever… right?

9. Misconceptions II
• Archive.org has it all!
… unless we’re talking about …
– Copyright issues
– ISP hopping
– Don’t archive me! (robot.txt files)
– Social networks, deep web subscription databases
– Pre 1996 Websites

10. Misconceptions III
• That’s okay, we have an Institutional Repository
(IR)
– What’s in it?
– How is it maintained?
– What file and data types does it cover?
– Open source or vendor-driven?
• An IR is NOT a long term DP solution (although it
may be linked to one).

11. Misconceptions IV
• We need lots of money to even begin
• Campus IT will take care of it for us
• … And they know about our needs and
standards
• Or we’ll have to do it all by ourselves. Without
help. Or funding.

12. What now?
• Education
• IMLS National Leadership Grant
• Start the conversation on your campus

13. Education: Yourself
• Nancy McGovern’s Three Legged Stool (2007)
– Technology, Organization, Resources
Source: “A Digital Decade: Where Have We Been and Where are We Going in
Digital Preservation?” RLG DigiNews 11:1 (April 15, 2007)
• Digital Preservation Management online
Workshop: http://www.dpworkshop.org/
• LOCKSS: Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe
• Special Collections 2.0 (2009)

14. Education: Others
• Educate your campus, your stakeholders, your
IT folks. This is everyone’s problem.
• NSF data management plan requirements: no
DMP, no grant $$
• Build allies and stakeholders

15. IMLS Grant
• NIU, ISU, WIU, Illinois Wesleyan, Chicago State
• Explore sustainable DP options for smaller and
medium institutions (or underfunded ones)
• Examine multiple options, incl. cloud storage
• White Paper (late 2013 or early 2014)

16. Ask your campus
• How much data are we talking about?
• What kinds?
• Public or private? Who holds copyright?
• Who holds it? (Faculty? The library? Vendors?
University offices?)
• Where?

17. When you get answers
• Create a digital collection development plan =
what do we plan/hope to collect and save?
• Create a data management plan = how do we
plan to save it?
• (DMPTool: https://dmp.cdlib.org/)
• Work towards a long-term funding plan = how
can we pay for this?

18. Moving forward
• Baby steps (like planning) still count. The
sooner we begin, the better off we are.
• Collaboration is key; this isn’t cheap, but
working together brings down costs.
• Be ready to leverage resources when they do
arrive.

19. Questions?
• lmthomas@niu.edu
• http://lynnemthomas.com
• Twitter: @lynnemthomas