Sustainable Preservation

One noteworthy factor about several of the digital preservation initiatives I’m visiting during my Churchill Fellowship is how each approach is underpinned by a certain philosophical world view.

For NLA, a key challenge for the digital preservation community is sustainability:

• The community needs to know as much about routes which haven’t worked as those which have.
• How do the parts of the preservation puzzle fit together?  Which parts of the puzzle have still to be solved?  How do we co-ordinate the game?
• Could we make better use of informal knowledge from enthusiasts?  We should recognise that we can’t be experts in everything (and that we can’t preserve everything – a principle most archivists should be happy enough with).
• Perhaps we are better at digital preservation than we think we are, but merely lack confidence in presenting this to management.

Advertisement