Blog

Rawia Awadallah is Manager of the ROMOR Project in Palestine

With the rapidly increasing reliance on digital material, digital preservation (DP) becomes critical to ensure long-term availability and understandability of information resources for further re-use and the development of new knowledge.  DP is a crucial activity of information management in various organizational settings. However, the priorities in many areas on this planet go far away from preserving digital content and focus only on preserving the basic survival requirements of people.

Heikki Helin is Senior Technology Coordinator for Digital Preservation Services at CSC - IT Center for Science Ltd in Espoo, Finland

Two years ago, on WDPD2018, we wrote a kind of a status report about national digital preservation service in Finland. A lot has happened since then. As today is the 5th anniversary of our digital preservation service in production (yes, exactly today), it’s perhaps a time to give a short overview of what has happened since.

Back in 2018, we provided the preservation service only for the national cultural heritage sector, but during 2019 this was extended to also include research data (national universities, research institutes, etc.). All this within the remit of the Ministry of Education and Culture of Finland. This, obviously, increased the number of our potential partner organisations significantly, and especially the potential amount of data to be preserved. At the end of 2018, we had preserved about 200 terabytes of data, but today the number is roughly one petabyte. The amount of data is growing on an average of 1.2 terabytes per day, with data flowing in constantly 24/7.

National Archives of Korea(NAK) is a central archive affiliated to the Ministry of the Interior and Safety that systematically collects and preserves major records, provides archival information to the public and carries out various activities so as to promote an archival culture. NAK opened its doors in 1969 and it has since been growing and developing steadily at the central records and archives management organization in charge of national records management. At the present, it has several branch offices in various regions, including the Government Complex in Daejeon, National Archives, Seoul, National Archives, Daejeon, National Archives, Busan and Presidential Archives.

There had been growing interests on the digital preservation among collecting institutions in Korea for some time. Each institution had only dealt with it’s own challenges so far, however, rather than creating a collaboration mechanism. It was noteworthy that three collecting institutions met for the first time, on February 12 to pave a road to cooperate: National Archives of Korea(NAK), National Library of Korea(NLK), and the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information(KISTI). They agreed on the need of a Korean version of Digital Preservation Coalition then.

In a couple of subsequent meetings, each participating institutions had chances to briefly share their past and current activities related to digital preservation: NLK performed various digital material preservation and digital service of online materials, KISTI conducted various research on digital preservation and NAK developed a digital format registry. They also discussed for cooperation agenda and agreed to organize joint seminars and regular meetings.

Etsuko Watanabe is the Chief of International Liasion Team at the National Archives of Japan.

National Archives of Japan (NAJ) is a government organisation which serves to ensure the proper preservation of, and provision of access to, public records with historical/evidential value. Over two decades have passed since archivists all over the world started to tackle issues brought about by ever-evolving digital technologies; however, the governments’ records in Japan have been preserved in physical (mainly paper-based) formats as original records, even though they were digitally generated. As of March 2020, the digital records account for only 0.1 % of our entire holdings (1.54 million volumes). In addition, the transfer of digital records created by governmental bodies started in 2011, and their total amount still remains at 1,759 volumes.

Along with the governments’ policies, digital records acquired by the NAJ are, in principle, converted to long-term preservation formats in order to ensure their readability. They were then preserved in the system for transfer, preservation and use, which is called the “Electronic Records Archives of Japan (ERAJ).” To ensure the preservation of digital records, we undertake the following processes: (a) creating metadata, (b) ensuring security, (c) integrity checks of digital files, and (d) carrying out proper backups. Long-term preservation formats for acquired records to be converted are regulated as PDF/A-1 (ISO19005-1) and JPEG 2000 (ISO/IEC15444) depending on their file format. In addition, it is specified that acquired records should be preserved in their original formats when they are unable to be converted, or need to be preserved in their original form. So far, the file formats of Microsoft Word and PDF are often seen among these acquired records.

Zhenxin Wu is Professor of the Information System Department, and Deputy Director of the Digital Preservation Center of Chinese Academy of Sciences at the National Science Library in Beijing, China. She is also responsible for the technical system and data archive for NDPP (National Digital Preservation Program). 

The following blog is also available in Chinese below:

This year, the sudden epidemic has had a huge impact on the world. Out of necessity, the global situation has greatly promoted the speed of digital transformation in various organizations as well as the increase of online communication, for example, #WeMissiPRES in September was successfully held online. The National Science Library of CAS has provided several information services to support research on COVID-19, such as VPN-based online access, fast thematic information services and tracking of the latest global research progress. With the changing states of COVID-19, these changes have gradually become the norm.

It also makes us more clearly aware of the impact of this ‘black swan event.’ We realize that an approach of "unbounded symbiosis"(that is to say, living and working together without geographic boundaries) is more suitable for the global fight against the epidemic, as well as for various industries in the digital age, and of course it is especially suitable for the future development of the digital preservation community.

Cynde Moya is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Centre for Transformative Media Technologies at Swinburne University of Technology  

I’m working on two ARC-funded projects out of the Centre for Transformative Media Technologies at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. These are Archiving Australian Media Arts: Towards a Method and National Collection (AAMA); and Play It Again: Preserving Australian Videogame History of the 1990s (PIA2).

Both projects are a progression of CI Melanie Swalwell’s career-spanning endeavor to call attention to and preserve these at-risk digital heritage materials. Swalwell has a talent in bringing diverse institutions, roles, and people together to work on common goals.

These projects are end-to-end: choosing materials to preserve, digitizing the obsolete carriers, testing the digitized objects in emulators/Emulation-as-a-Service, checking fidelity of the emulated works with renderings on real computers, storing the digitized works with appropriate descriptive and technical metadata, and providing these emulated works to archivists and curators to store and use in exhibitions.

Serena Coates is the Lead of Preservation Services at the State Library of Queensland.

 To say that 2020 has been a challenging year is somewhat of an understatement.  In Australia, the year started with horrendous bushfires over much of the nation, and then of course, COVID-19 affected the world on a scale hitherto unknown to current inhabitants of planet Earth.

These history-making events were captured on our phones, shown on our televisions, discussed on social media, and will have a lasting effect on our psyches.  As a collecting institution, State Library of Queensland has responded to these global events at the local level, by capturing the stories of 2020 and preserving them for future generations.

To date, State Library of Queensland has collected and archived over 2000 images, videos, digital stories, oral histories, ephemera, realia, and emails relating to Queensland’s experience of and response to COVID-19.  Through a mixture of donations from the public, commissioned works from documentary photographers and storytellers, and web archiving, we have captured a broad cross-section of experiences of Queenslanders during this challenging year. 

Evanthia Samaras is the VERS Senior Officer at Public Record Office Victoria.

Over the past few years, Public Record Office Victoria (PROV) has been working to develop and test solutions to appropriately manage and preserve Lotus Notes email accumulations.

This work has been a part of our wider Victorian Electronic Records Strategy (VERS), which is about ensuring the creation, capture and preservation of authentic, complete and meaningful digital records by the Victorian public sector.

This blog will share some findings from our Stage 2, email appraisal, disposal and preservation project.

Lee-Anne Raymond is the Senior Coordinator (DAMS) at Museums Victoria. 

The recovery rescue of valuable digital images from relative oblivion sometimes takes a pandemic lockdown to achieve. Whilst a viral outbreak of global proportion has delivered us anxious and uncertain times, it has also presented us with unique opportunity.

In late March 2020 as the Covid-19 Pandemic hit Australia’s public institutions, including Museums Victoria (MV), were transformed overnight. Only those with essential worker status were permitted access, ensuring precious collections and infrastructure were safe. MV’s essential workers variously relayed how strange it was to see the place so bereft of staff, volunteers and visitors “...the Museum is so quiet”.

Toni Burton, Collection Curation & Engagement Manager & Bridie Flynn, Senior Librarian Victorian & Australian Collections, State Library Victoria. 

As the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic started to unfold, it was clear that State Library Victoria needed a rapid collecting response to ensure that this event was documented and recorded.

Memory Bank: Collective Isolation Project developed as a cross department initiative to engage audiences in the act of citizen collecting. Using a series of weekly prompts, highlighted by existing collection material, people were invited to contribute their own documentary material to record their individual experiences. The prompts allowed collection and curatorial staff to guide the type of material we would like to receive and consider what might be important for future generations of researchers. A wide range of responses were received but due to the nature of the way people were living most submissions came in the form of digital content.