Virtual reality (VR) refers to a set of technologies which build on existing 3D rendering technologies, with the aim of creating experiences which completely immerse a user in a virtual environment. The related term of Immersive Media (also known by the acronym XR) refers to a set of technologies used to create experiences, which either completely immerse a user in a virtual environment (Virtual Reality), augment the real world with virtual elements (Augmented Reality) or combine elements of the two (Mixed Reality). Key technologies include headsets, tracking systems, real-time 3D software and 360 video.

Group: Media Art

Trend in 2022:

Consensus Decision

 Added to List: 2021

Imminence of Action

Action is recommended within three years, detailed assessment within one year.

Significance and Impact

The loss of tools, data or services within this group would impact on a large group of people and sectors.

Effort to Preserve / Inevitability

It would require a major effort to prevent or reduce losses in this group, including the development of new preservation tools or techniques.

Examples

Oculus Rift, VR tours, art installations

‘Critically Endangered’ in the Presence of Aggravating Conditions lack of established frameworks and tools; technology is relatively poorly understood in the digital preservation domain; many of the technologies relied upon are proprietary; technology is seen as inherently fragile and therefore risky to collect and preserve; emulators do not currently support XR applications; expected to be difficult and costly to migrate, a process itself dependent on access to vulnerable source materials.

Vulnerable in the Presence of Good Practice

Effective replication; emulation; strong technical documentation; preservation pathway; good descriptive cataloguing; trusted repository.

2021 Jury Review

This was a new 2021 entry submitted through the open nomination process. These VR technologies are finding use in many sectors, including archaeology, architecture, contemporary art, documentary film, gaming, forensics, science and engineering. While these technologies are not new per se, having experienced a first wave in the 1990s, they have experienced renewed interest recently as a result of a new generation of hardware. There are connections between this entry and others relating to both Media Art and Gaming, but it has been included as its own entry to emphasize the issues of preservation that pertain to the interconnected set of specific hardware and software components that access to XR experiences is contingent on. VR is challenging to document due to the individual nature of the experience, and components tend to become rapidly obsolete due to a fast rate of technological change as the industry pushes newer, higher fidelity hardware and software. This results in the potential to lose access to XR software applications, as old VR applications can no longer communicate with new XR hardware. The reliance on proprietary software and hardware components, as well as the lack of industry standards, poses a further risk.

Additional Jury Comments

The current wave of materials made using XR technologies represent a unique point in time for the continued development of the technology and therefore represent a significant piece of computing history. Individual materials/experiences created using XR technologies present their own significance beyond this, which, noted elsewhere in this entry, can be represented in a wide range of sectors.

The impacts of the loss of access to virtual reality materials could be widely felt, given their wide-ranging uses across many sectors — most notably collections and archives containing materials accessed using these technologies. Simultaneously there is a risk of a loss of understanding of this technologies' development during the 2010-present period, which is likely to be of historical significance in and of itself.

Case Studies or Examples: 

• Resources and recent outputs from the Preserving and Sharing Born Digital and Hybrid Objects From and Across The National Collection project, online at: https://www.vam.ac.uk/research/projects/preserving-and-sharing-born-digital-and-hybrid-objects. In particular the VR case study included in the project report. See: Arrigoni, G., Kane, N.,  McConnachie, S., and McKim, S. (2022) Preserving and sharing born-digital and hybrid objects from and across the National Collection, Project Report: January 2022, online at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7097278 

• The Tate Preserving Immersive Media project, which is developing strategies for the preservation of artworks which utilize immersive media such as 360 video, real-time 3D, virtual, augmented and mixed reality, online at: https://www.tate.org.uk/about-us/projects/preserving-immersive-media 

• Coates, C. (2021) Virtual Reality is a big trend in museums, but what are the best examples of museums using VR? MuseumXR, Museum Next, online at: https://www.museumnext.com/article/how-museums-are-using-virtual-reality/ 

See also: 

• NEW MEDIA MUSEUMS: Creating Framework for Preserving and Collecting Media Arts in V4, initiated by the Olomouc Museum of Art as a joint international platform for sharing experience with building and maintaining collections of new media artworks across different types of institutions. The aim of the project is to find workable methods for heritage institutions to build and maintain collections of media arts, which are necessary for safeguarding this area for the benefit of society. Online at http://cead.space/Detail/projects/3797 

• The Collaborative Infrastructure for sustainable access to digital art LIMA project, to prevent the loss of digital artworks and to commonly develop the knowledge to preserve these works in a sustainable way. The project ‘Infrastructure sustainable accessibility digital art’ invests in research, training, knowledge sharing and conservation to prevent the loss of both digital artworks and the knowledge to preserve them. Online at https://www.li-ma.nl/lima/article/collaborative-infrastructure

Original recordings of music and other performance from which retail products are derived, typically in multiple tracks and uncompressed high-resolution sound quality

Group: Sound and Vision

Trend in 2021:

Unanimous  Decision

Added to List: 2019

Previous classification: Endangered

Trend in 2022:

Imminence of Action

Action is recommended within three years, detailed assessment within one year.

Significance of Loss

The loss of tools, data or services within this group would impact on people and sectors around the world.

Effort to Preserve

It would require a small effort to address losses in this group, requiring the application of proven preservation tools or techniques.

Examples

Original official or master recordings of a song, sound or performance owned by music industry

‘Critically Endangered’ in the Presence of Aggravating Conditions

Single point of failure; storage on old or degrading media; lack of ongoing investment in changing preservation requirements; lack of capability; poor documentation; dependence on small staff

‘Vulnerable’ in the Presence of Good Practice

High quality storage; meticulous and consistent replication; trusted repository; preservation requirement understood at executive level and funded accordingly; leadership in preservation community; expert staff

2021 Jury Review

In 2019, this entry was added as a subset of a previous 2017 entry, ‘Digital Music Production and Sharing,’ which was split to draw attention to the different challenges faced by the different forms. Though it overlaps with other entries, including ‘Digital Archives of Music Production,’ it is a separate entry to emphasize the inherent and great value of original recordings over and above those distributed and the concomitant need for active preservation.
The 2021 Jury agreed with the entry’s assigned risk classification with no noted changes towards increased or reduced risk.

Additional Comments

The imminence of action will depend on format and age, and the significance of loss may be more largely felt if recordings of a major recording star

This is interesting as the recording houses should be seeing the value of these - so why are they not taking responsibility for looking after them? Do they not feel it is in their financial interests? The archival practices of the studios are typically based on value - the recordings are assumed to be worth keeping. However, this means relatively low-value original recordings may not be transferred to new media in a timely way and could be lost. There is no comprehensive deposit scheme to address the long tail of music production, and it is often unclear exactly where responsibility lies.

Case Studies or Examples:

• The Jury was particularly aware of the case of the ‘Universal Fire’ of 2008, which has only recently been reported widely. See Rosen, J., (2019) The Day the Music Burned. The New York Times. 11 Jun. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/magazine/universal-fire-master-recordings.html

Digital materials where copyright is uncertain, disputed or unknowable meaning that preservation actions are constrained or prevented.

Group: Orphaned Works

Trend in 2021:

Consensus Decision

Added to List: 2017

Previous classification: Endangered

Trend in 2022:

Imminence of Action

Action is recommended within three years, detailed assessment within one year.

Significance of Loss

The loss of tools, data or services within this group would impact on many people and sectors.

Effort to Preserve

It would require a major effort to address losses in this group, possibly requiring the development of new preservation tools or techniques.

Examples

Photographs, music recordings, literature.

‘Critically Endangered’ in the Presence of Aggravating Conditions

Lack of documentation; dependencies resulting from hardware, software or media; lack of use resulting in lack of priority; lack of strategic investment in digital preservation; workflows that inhibit preservation of content that has not been licensed; encryption; poor storage.

‘Vulnerable’ in the Presence of Good Practice

Preservation pathway enabled; proven preservation plan applied; active effort to resolve IPR issues; institutional willingness to take risks for preservation.

2021 Jury Review

When this entry was added in 2017, there was little evidence of any renewed effort to address the issue of orphaned work. While there have been improvements to the baseline competence of the archival and library professions in their understanding of copyright and the skills to preserve contents, this alone provides a narrow basis for optimism and the scale of the challenge is likely to have grown just as quickly if not more so as aggravating conditions become more prevalent too. The 2021 Jury added that while content is preservable, the preservation of orphan works is a matter of process and risk appetite. Added to the complexity are changes to copyright legislation in and across different national and regional contexts, particularly for UK institutions post-Brexit, as noted in the additional comments below. For this reason, there was a 2021 trend towards greater risk.

Additional Comments

The Jury would encourage organizations to take a risk-based approach which would help them preserve collections. Copyright infringements are only likely to become a significant issue in the context of access, and in most cases, the likelihood of any specific action is small. Preservation needs to be presented as a social good, one without which copyright holders would simply be unable to benefit from the property rights they seek to protect.

For UK institutions, the Jury recommends commentary by Naomi Korn on the status of orphan works and the impact of Brexit - that UK institutions are no longer able to make use of the EU Orphan Works Directive and the alternative Orphan Works Licensing Scheme is costly. A list of resources is available at https://naomikorn.com/resources/. For those in the UK, there is also the

UK Copyright and Creative Economy Centre (CREATe) for resources on orphan works and copyright more broadly at https://www.create.ac.uk/resources/.

Case Studies or Examples:

• The National Disc of the BBC Domesday Project offers an example of loss outside of the legal deposit mandate where the copyright owner cannot be traced. See: https://www.atsf.co.uk/dottext/domesday.html

Digital records of the creative and production process for film and television, such as initial designs, screenplay and script, on set still photography, rushes or out-takes that are not included in the final production and therefore not available to on-air broadcast archives or film libraries

Group: Sound and Vision

Trend in 2021:

Consensus Decision

Added to List: 2017

Previous classification: Endangered

Trend in 2022:

Imminence of Action

Action is recommended within three years, detailed assessment within one year.

Significance of Loss

The loss of tools, data or services within this group would impact on many people and sectors.

Effort to Preserve

It would require a major effort to address losses in this group, possibly requiring the development of new preservation tools or techniques.

Examples

TV and Movie production archives in digital form; outputs of script management software; drafts of screenplay; continuity photography; costume design; set design; lighting and sound design.

‘Critically Endangered’ in the Presence of Aggravating Conditions

Lack of custodial responsibility; confusion over intellectual property rights; lack of appraisal; lack of recognition of preservation at executive level;

‘Vulnerable’ in the Presence of Good Practice

Preservation responsibility understood and acted upon; preservation infrastructure and planning for key items; access and use of collections to inform subsequent productions

2021 Jury Review

This entry was first introduced in 2017 and noted as being ‘of concern,' though the Jury did not have the capacity to assess the entry thoroughly. Additional expertise was recruited for the 2019 Jury, and the entry was added with the Endangered classification based on the materials not being collected in any coherent way, likely loss when not valued by production companies, costly space needed to hold them, and lack of expertise needed to catalogue and collect them. In other words, this is not primarily a technical problem and advocacy is needed urgently.
The 2021 Jury added the trend towards greater risk in light of the rise of streaming services. The movie and film industry has been digitizing for a long time, but COVID has brought with it the rise of streaming services like Netflix, Disney+ etc., with productions that are tied to their organizations. These types of pre-production materials are great for promotion before and immediately after release; ongoing preservation after promotion finishes is unclear or uncertain.

Additional Comments

With the importance of advocacy in mind, it is important to raise awareness and educate directors and filmmakers about managing their digital archive so that it is still accessible if donated to a cultural institution in the future.

Recordings of game playing and e-sports that show how games are experienced and played, especially multi-user online games and tournaments.

Group: Gaming

Trend in 2021:

Consensus Decision

Added to List: 2019

Previous classification: Endangered

Trend in 2022:

Imminence of Action

Action is recommended within three years, detailed assessment within one year.

Significance of Loss

The loss of tools, data or services within this group would impact on people and sectors around the world.

Effort to Preserve

It would require a major effort to prevent losses in this group, possibly requiring the development of new preservation tools or techniques.

Examples

Material uploaded to Amazon Twitch, game channels on YouTube and other playback services

‘Critically Endangered’ in the Presence of Aggravating Conditions

Controversies around intellectual property rights; lack of offline backup; changing business model of providers; limited recognition of cultural and historic value of game play; over dependence on goodwill subsidy of ad-hoc community; lack of preservation know-how at service providers; dependency on bespoke hardware or interfaces.

‘Vulnerable’ in the Presence of Good Practice

Offline backup; managed intellectual property rights; players and audiences invested in data

2021 Jury Review

This entry was added in 2019 as a subset of an entry made in 2017 for ‘Gaming,’ which the Jury split into four more discrete entries. There are overlaps with the social media entries, except this category specifically draws attention to gaming and e-sports and therefore is a subset of both. By including as a separate entry, the 2019 Jury encouraged greater consideration of the cultural and historic value that such recordings are likely to acquire as well as the technical and economic challenges to preservation. The content is not particularly distinctive in technical terms, but there are aggravating circumstances, namely an almost complete reliance on commercial third parties (Google/YouTube and Amazon/Twitch) for the infrastructure around video capture and hosting. As the majority of this material is experienced and hosted on user-driven and ephemeral platforms such as YouTube and Twitch, it is less 'collectable' than the actual games and is unlikely to exist in private or public collections. Involves platforms that the digital preservation sector does not have much experience working with, e.g., Twitch. For these reasons, the 2021 trend was towards greater risk.

Additional Jury Comments

Copyright claims on video content by publishers such as Nintendo - while less prevalent now than a few years ago - also complicate things. The significance of loss here is high because recordings, including commentary, and onscreen interactions with other players, seem likely to be the best way of preserving the experience of playing certain games at certain times. We are familiar with the challenges of preserving video, but we need to think about how established approaches will work in the context of the aggravating circumstances outlined above. There is a degree of urgency associated with working out how (legally and technically) preserving the materials that they hold may be preserved.

Important for social context, and from a DP point of view videos should not be too hard, but if we are capturing the experience to inform digital preservation actions and intents, then do not these videos exist in places such as YouTube and wouldn't they be brought in as part of the 'documentary' evidence of DP actions taken on the game or sports that have come into the archive?

Materials saved to magnetic tape, portable hard disks or other magnetic media in the last five years where the reader devices are still supported and can be integrated easily into hardware infrastructure.

Group: Portable Media

Trend in 2021:

Consensus Decision

Added to List: 2019

Previous classification: Endangered

Trend in 2022:

Imminence of Action

Action is recommended within three years, detailed assessment within one year.

Significance of Loss

The loss of tools, data or services within this group would impact on many people and sectors.

Effort to Preserve

It would require a small effort to preserve materials in this group, with the deployment of proven tools or techniques.

Examples

LTO8 tapes; portable hard disks

‘Critically Endangered’ in the Presence of Aggravating Conditions

Poor storage conditions; encryption; digital rights management; lack of replication; lack of documentation; lack of periodic testing; lack of refreshment pathway; lack of access to readers; out of manufacturers’ warranty or no warranty; storage within paper files.

‘Vulnerable’ in the Presence of Good Practice

Regular review and testing; replication; refreshment plan; comprehensive documentation; high quality storage; regular maintenance of readers; multiple readers available.

2021 Jury Review

This entry was added in 2019 to ensure that the range of media storage is properly assessed and presented. Magnetic media is typically more fragile than optical media because it is susceptible to ‘bitrot’ and magnetic damage in ways that optical media are not.
However, the 2021 Jury commented on how the types of magnetic media used have improved the last five years, notably the use of LTO, increasing good practice and trending towards reduced risk in this respect. It is important to note that LTO tapes come in different generations. Some pose greater preservation risks now (e.g., an organization with no equipment or way of reading content), so the use of LTO is good practice so long as it includes the active management of associated risks.

Additional Comments

This entry is highly dependent on who is looking after the portable media but made more difficult over time. The lack of granularity in the definition means that only general advice can be offered, such as to refresh media. In time, it may yet be more useful to split all storage media (maybe 100 items long) with an indication of how long these can be expected to last. In many cases, specialists can recover obsolete media, but the cost of employing them can become an aggravating condition.

It is important to emphasize that the short lifetime of many storage devices is not a problem to be solved with new long-lasting storage technologies (and indeed, many inventions have come and gone). Cheap commodity storage has been purposely designed to deliver value at a low price for a short time. Therefore, management and preservation processes for monitoring and refreshment need to take these characteristics into account.

Documents presented in PDF (Portable Document Format) format (ISO 32000:1 and ISO 32000:2) and other data wrapped inside them, other than PDF/A but including all other variants and versions.

Group: Formats

Trend in 2021:

Consensus Decision

Added to List: 2017

Previous classification: Endangered

Trend in 2022:

Imminence of Action

Action is recommended within five years, detailed assessment within three years.

Significance of Loss

The loss of tools, data or services within this group would impact on people and sectors around the world..

Effort to Preserve

It would require a small effort to address losses in this group, requiring the application of proven preservation tools or techniques.

Examples

PDF 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 (excluding PDF/A as a subset), 1.5, 1.6, 1.7 and 2.0. PDF/X and PDF/E

‘Critically Endangered’ in the Presence of Aggravating Conditions

Loss of context; loss of authenticity or integrity; external dependencies; poor storage; lack of understanding; significant diversity of data; poorly developed digitization specifications; lack of integrity checking; poorly developed migration or normalizations specifications; lack of virus control; poor storage or replication; lack of validation at the point of creation; encryption.

‘Vulnerable’ in the Presence of Good Practice

Well managed data infrastructure; preservation planning; authenticity managed; use of persistent identifiers; reduction of dependencies; application of records management standards; recognition of preservation requirements beyond formats; strategic investment in digital preservation; preservation roadmap; participation in digital preservation community; format validation.

2021 Jury Review

The 2019 Jury introduced this entry as a subset of a previous entry for ‘PDF,’ emphasizing the different threats faced by different types of PDF. PDF/A explicitly reduces dependencies and thus curtails preservation risks for certain types of content: PDFs of other types do not. PDF and PDF/A have sometimes been misunderstood as a generic solution to digital preservation requirements. In the Jury’s eyes, it can only offer a preservation solution when embedded within a wider preservation infrastructure.
The 2021 Jury agreed, noting a trend towards reduced risk as PDF continues to be a relatively stable format and there continue to be developments in tools and techniques (e.g., ability to convert PDF to PDFA to reduce dependencies). The Endangered classification remains given the need for support and embedding in a preservation infrastructure.

Additional Jury Comments

There is a lot of material produced and kept in PDF. Some of it is authoritative, in other words, the only available copy, while some of it is not. However, if it is the only copy and it is lost, it can have an impact on a lot of people

The challenge in evaluating the significance and impact of the loss of PDFs is that they're quite often a surrogate of something else, whether a digitized record or a Word document, etc. Whether or not that record is retained may be a factor. We should also be considering PDF Portfolios, which are an extension of PDF 1.7. Portfolios contain embedded files and can include text documents, spreadsheets, PowerPoints, emails, Computer Aided Design (CAD) drawings. Assessing the risk of this complex format may need to be separate from other PDFs.

See also: Fanning, B (2017) Preserving with PDF/A (Second Edition), DPC Technology Watch Report 17-01 online at http://doi.org/10.7207/twr17-01.

Documents, correspondence and other records created in the course of contractual dealings between individuals and agencies, especially where the subjects are of long duration and may be subject to legal scrutiny at undefined points in the distant future.

Group: Digital Legal Records

Trend in 2021:

Consensus Decision

Added to List: 2019

Previous classification: Endangered

Trend in 2022:

Imminence of Action

Action is recommended within three years, detailed assessment within one year.

Significance of Loss

The loss of tools, data or services within this group would impact on many people and sectors.

Effort to Preserve

It would require a small effort to preserve materials in this group, with the deployment of proven tools or techniques.

Examples

Contracts, receipts, correspondence, license agreements, building consent, warranties, and any other document or record that represents a legally binding transaction or permission. Such records may be useful in the avoidance or resolution of disputes whether in court or prior to proceedings. Includes Online Terms and Conditions for e-commerce or end-user agreements for services.

‘Critically Endangered’ in the Presence of Aggravating Conditions

Loss of context; loss of authenticity or integrity; external dependencies; poor storage; lack of understanding; churn of staff; poorly framed or over-zealous disposal; ill-informed records management; misplaced fears with respect to data protection, encryption.

‘Vulnerable’ in the Presence of Good Practice

Well managed data infrastructure; preservation enabled at the point of creation; carefully managed authenticity; use of persistent identifiers; finding aids; well managed records management processes; application of records management standards

2021 Jury Review

This entry was added in 2019 as a subset of an entry introduced in 2017 for ‘Digital Legal Records and Evidence,’ which was split into four more discrete entries. There is overlap with Pension Mortgage and Insurance Records entry, but this entry addresses digital records with value over the long term that may not be immediately obvious at the point of creation.
The likelihood of liquidation, mergers or acquisitions means that these records are trending towards greater risk. There was a 2020 trend towards greater risk in light of the Covid Pandemic causing profound dislocation across the economy, placing many companies and agencies at financial risk.
The 2021 Jury, however, noted some improvements in record-keeping legislation and regulations and guidance to this area advising what needs to be kept and for how long; while there is still room for improving how legal agreements are managed through records management standards and processes, there is a growing number of agencies with experience of handling this and therefore there had not been a notable trend towards an increased risk for 2021.

Additional Comments

The work and outputs of the EDRMS Preservation Taskforce, such as the EDRMS Preservation Toolkit, may be helpful for guidance as many of these records will be held in EDRMS type systems https://www.dpconline.org/digipres/implement-digipres/edrms-preservation-toolkit.

Primary and/or original recordings of radio broadcasts generated live but often poorly stored thereafter, for example offline recordings on single LTO (Linear Tape Open) Tapes

Group: Sound and Vision

Trend in 2021:

Consensus Decision

Added to List: 2017

Previous classification: Endangered

Trend in 2022:

Imminence of Action

Action is recommended within three years, detailed assessment within one year.

Significance of Loss

The loss of tools, data or services within this group would impact on people and sectors around the world.

Effort to Preserve

It would require a major effort to address losses in this group, possibly requiring the development of new preservation tools or techniques.

Examples

Broadcast archives of UK commercial local radio;

‘Critically Endangered’ in the Presence of Aggravating Conditions

Lack of archival mandate; lack of capability of archive; lack of policy or capacity within broadcaster; small or unprofitable broadcaster; concern over intellectual property rights; overzealous rights management protection; device or software dependence; dependence on proprietary or obsolete formats; lack or loss of documentation; little use or inaccessibility; storage (typically tapes) older than warranty; lack of media refreshment plan; lack of error or integrity checking process; single copies

‘Vulnerable’ in the Presence of Good Practice

Archival responsibility accepted and acted upon; replication; refreshment of media; good documentation; active in digital preservation community; trusted repository; content re-used

2021 Jury Review

This entry was added in 2017 as a separate entry due to concern over recordings on LTO tapes. These provide between 15 and 30 years’ storage which may be less depending on usage and storage conditions. LTO1 and LTO2, which were released in 2000 and 2003 respectively, have largely reached the final phases of viability. Reader compatibility may be more problematic than media resilience, however. Drives supporting newer releases of the format are typically only compatible within two generations, and experience with the recently released LTO8 suggests that it is only backwardly compatible to one generation. One major national archive and library for instance had decided to expedite migration away from LTO6, which is becoming obsolete more quickly than anticipated. Through time, the risks to collections that have not been refreshed or replicated from early LTO tapes expand. Thus, the overall trend is towards greater risk when collections are not migrated. Older formats, perhaps as recently as LTO6, extinction events should be anticipated within two to five years. The 2021 Jury agreed with the Endangered classification, noting the importance of a selective approach.

Additional Comments

Depending on the legislative context, digital radio recordings may fall under published works if they are broadcasts. Additionally, if the recordings are broadcast by a taxpayer-funded broadcaster, record-keeping guidelines may already exist to advise how long content be kept, which would then inform a selective approach to caring and looking after them for as long as required.

While broadcasters may keep their own programmes, they are often not comprehensively collected or archived by memory institutions as contributions to cultural heritage.

Digital materials generated through legal proceedings in court.

Group: Digital Legal Records

Trend in 2021:

Consensus Decision

Added to List: 2017

Previous classification: Endangered

Trend in 2022:

Imminence of Action

Action is recommended within three years, detailed assessment within one year.

Significance of Loss

The loss of tools, data or services within this group would impact on people and sectors around the world.

Effort to Preserve

It would require a major effort to address losses in this group, possibly requiring the development of new preservation tools or techniques.

Examples

Digital record of proceedings; digital records of rulings and all manner of quasi-judicial proceedings and tribunals.

‘Critically Endangered’ in the Presence of Aggravating Conditions

Loss of context; loss of integrity; external dependencies; poor storage; lack of understanding; churn of staff; significant or diversity of data; poorly developed specifications; ill-informed records management; poorly developed transfer protocols; poorly developed migration or normalization; longstanding protocols or procedures that apply unsuitable paper processes to digital materials.

‘Vulnerable’ in the Presence of Good Practice

Well managed data infrastructure; preservation enabled at ingest; carefully managed authenticity; use of persistent identifiers; finding aids; well managed records management processes; recognition of preservation requirements at highest levels; strategic investment in digital preservation; preservation roadmap; participation in digital preservation community.

2021 Jury Review

This entry is a subset of a previous 2019 entry, ‘Proceedings and Evidence in Court,’ which was itself created as a subset of entry in 2017 for ‘Digital Legal Records and Evidence.’ The 2021 Jury split ‘Proceedings and Evidence in Court’ into two more discrete entries to highlight their distinct preservation challenges and risk profiles. This entry includes court proceedings and recognizes that courts have a responsibility to provide robust preservation that ensures the authenticity of these records.

Additional Comments

Standard Records Management processes within designated agencies should be able to take care of the preservation of materials like this but given that evidence is likely to involve complex types of data, such agencies may not be equipped to deliver preservation effectively. It is surprising that courts are not more obvious in the digital preservation community, where solutions now exist.

Recordings of proceedings in court may include the AV recording of the court session, which may pose particular preservation risks associated with the video files.