Zhenxin Wu is the deputy director of NDPP (National Digital Preservation Program), and she is also a senior researcher of the National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Additionally, she is a professor of school of economics and management, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China.
[Chinese version below / 中文版本见下方 ]
It is well-known that we live in an era where the creation, dissemination, and preservation of knowledge are fully integrated into a digital ecosystem. Digital formats have already become the most popular format for S&T outcomes such as journal articles, academic monographs, and technical patents, etc. Meanwhile, rich media content, academic social networks, digital humanities, and digital arts have increasingly become indispensable information resources across all fields. All signs clearly indicate that in our current era, the long-term preservation of knowledge and culture is almost synonymous with the long-term preservation of digital information.
The National Digital Preservation Program (NDPP), a collaborative preservation system of six institutions, including libraries and information institutions, is responsible for the long-term preservation of our knowledge and culture in China.
(1) The Library’s Mission in the Digital Age: To Preserve Digital Knowledge
The emergence of libraries and archives stems from humanity's need to preserve cultural heritage. Their core mission is to collect, organize, preserve, and distribute the memories of human civilization. From the Epic of Gilgamesh inscribed on clay tablets in the Library of Ashurbanipal around 2600 BCE, to the establishment of the Tianyi Pavilion in Ningbo, China, in 1561 - one of the world’s oldest private libraries - humanity has long been systematically safeguarding its culture heritage.
Digital preservation is not a new thing to come along with technology. It is the continuation of this timeless human mission into the digital age: to protect knowledge against the erosion of time.
Academic libraries, in particular, have always been faithful stewards of S&T literature, and based on it, the founding mission of NDPP is to guarantee the sustainable accessibility of digital scholarly resources.
(2) The Library’ s Responsibility in the Digital Age: To Confront the Fragility of Digital Information
Unlike traditional information carriers such as paper, cloth, oracle bones, bronze, and stone, which can 'passively' last for hundreds of years, digital storage media not only physically degrade, but also rely on a rapidly evolving technological ecosystem for their existence. A file's readability depends not just on the health of its storage medium, but also on the availability of compatible hardware, operating systems, and software to render it correctly. Therefore, we need to address not only the decay of physical media but also the evaporation of their entire 'context'. Without continuous and proactive preservation and management, the digital memories of our era can easily disappear. Therefore, libraries have transformed from preservers of static physical media into active, permanent managers of fragile digital information and digital ecosystems.
What NDPP does is provide a necessary 'stability' for this fragile digital world. Through proactive, professional, and continuous intervention, we transform fleeting digital information into cultural and knowledge heritage that can be preserved permanently.
(3) The Library’s Commitment in the Digital Age: To Ensure the Authenticity of Digital Information
The most insidious and dangerous threat to digital information is not its physical destruction, but its corruption at the logical level - the loss of authenticity. The nature of digital information as a series of binary bitstreams makes it highly susceptible to manipulation of all kinds, making its authenticity and integrity difficult to guarantee. The rapid rise of image processing software like Adobe Photoshop and Artificial Intelligence Generated Content (AIGC) allows digital content to be altered seamlessly and tracelessly. In the digital age, the age-old creed of "seeing is believing" is being replaced by the reality that "what you see may not be true."
In this context, the mission of digital preservation goes beyond merely ensuring that files 'exist' and extends to ensuring that they serve as 'authentic' records. NDPP ensures the authenticity and reliability of archived information by establishing and maintaining a strict, verifiable custody chain of digital object, utilizing technologies such as provenance and integrity verification.
No single institution can easily cope with the massive scale, high complexity, and ongoing challenges of digital preservation. It is only by building a collaborative preservation alliance that we can ensure the long-term survival of our digital heritage. NDPP is precisely a systematic, national-level strategic solution for protecting cultural and knowledge achievements, developed jointly by libraries and information institutions to address all the aforementioned challenges.
为什么进行数字保存？——来自中国国家数字科技文献资源长期保存体系（NDPP）的声音
众所周知，我们正处在一个知识的生产、传播与保存已全面融入数字生态系统的时代。无论是期刊论文、学术专著，还是技术专利，科技成果，其主流载体已然是数字版本。与此同时，富媒体内容、学术社交网络、数字人文、数字艺术等，也日益成为各个领域的重要信息资源。种种迹象清晰地表明，在当今时代，知识与文化的长期保存，就等同于数字信息的长期保存。
NDPP是包括图书馆和信息机构在内的共6个机构共同组成的国家保存体系，共同承担知识与文化的长期保存的责任。
- 1. 数字时代图书馆的使命：保存数字知识。
图书馆与档案馆的诞生，源于人类保存文化遗产的保管需求，其核心使命——收集、整理、保存并传承人类文明的记忆。从公元前2600年亚述巴尼拔图书馆泥板上镌刻的《吉尔伽美什史诗》，到1561年在中国宁波建成的天一阁藏书楼，人类早已开始系统性地守护信息遗产。
数字保存并非一个因技术而生的全新领域，而是人类一项永恒使命在当代的延伸：守护知识，抵御时间的侵蚀。
而学术性图书馆始终是科技文献信息的忠实传承者，NDPP的使命，便植根于此。NDPP初心便是保障数字科技学术资源的可持续性获取。
- 2. 数字时代图书馆的责任：应对数字信息的脆弱。
与可以“被动”存续千年的甲骨、青铜、石头等信息载体不同，承载当代知识的数字载体不仅物理上会衰变，更严重的是，其赖以生存的技术生态系统也在飞速演进。一个文件的可读性，不仅取决于存储介质的健康状况，还取决于是否存在兼容的硬件、操作系统和应用程序来正确地渲染它。因此，问题不再仅仅是物理对象的腐朽，而是其整个“语境”的蒸发。若没有持续、主动的保存和管理，我们这个时代的数字记忆很容易消失。因此图书馆已经从静态物理介质的保存者，转变为脆弱数字信息和数字生态系统的积极、永久的管理者。
NDPP所做的，就是为这个脆弱的数字世界提供一种必需的“稳定性”。通过主动、专业、持续的干预，将稍纵即逝的数字信息，转化为可以永久持有的文化和知识遗产。
- 3. 数字时代图书馆的承诺：确保数字信息的真实。
数字信息面临的最隐蔽、也最危险的威胁，并非物理层面的消亡，而是逻辑层面的败坏——真实性的侵蚀。数字信息的本质是一系列二进制比特流，这种编码特性使其极易受到各种形式的操控，其真实性与完整性难以得到保证。Adobe Photoshop等图像处理软件及人工智能生成内容（AIGC）的迅速兴起，使得数字内容可以轻松被无缝、无痕地篡改，在数字时代，“眼见为实”的古老信条正在被“眼见未必为实”的现实所取代。
在此背景下，数字保存的使命便超越了确保文件“存在”的范畴，延伸至确保其作为“真实”的记录。NDPP通过建立和维护一套严格的、可验证的数字对象监管链（Chain of Custody），利用溯源信息和完整性校验等技术手段来确保存档信息的真实性和可信赖。
任何单一机构都很难面对数字保存的巨大规模、高复杂度、持续挑战，唯有构建一个基于共同责任、分布协作和相互信任的共同体，才能确保数字文化成果的长久存续。NDPP正是应对挑战而实施的一个保护文化和知识成果的国家级战略解决方案。