Digital Preservation Coalition

British Library

Excerpt from DPC Annual Report 2008-2009

The British Library has continued to expand its digital preservation activities and is near the halfway mark in progress towards its ten year goal to fully preserve its substantial collection of digital materials. National and international collaboration has remained a key focus, with the EU co-funded Planets Project moving into its final year and delivering second generation digital preservation tools and services. A third phase of the LIFE Project, co-funded by JISC and RIN, was launched and will develop a predictive lifecycle costing tool over the coming year.

Significant practical progress has been made in preserving British Library collections. A new Content Stabilisation activity has been established to move content stored on ‘at-risk’ hand held media into secure storage and has processed some 80 terabytes to date. The Digital Library Programme has launched an internal project to integrate the results of development projects such as Planets and LIFE with the BL’s Digital Library System. This will provide the ability to plan and execute appropriate preservation actions on BL collections. A dedicated full-time post has been established in the growing Digital Preservation Team to develop and realise a solution for the long term preservation of complex web materials.