From rescue to long‐term maintenance: preservation as a core function in the management of digital assets
| Date | 01 March 2004 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/03055720410530933 |
| Pages | 6-16 |
| Published date | 01 March 2004 |
| Author | Maria Inês Cordeiro |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
From rescue to
long-term
maintenance:
preservation as a core
function in the
management of digital
assets
Maria Ine
ˆs Cordeiro
The author
Maria Ine
ˆs Cordeiro is Library Information Systems Manager,
Art Library, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal.
Keywords
Digital storage, Systems documentation, Information systems
Abstract
Digital preservation is currently a major concern for the
information management, technological and scientific
communities in all domains. It is also critical at the
organisational level, with special pressure for all institutions with
a responsibility for preservation, such as libraries and archives.
This paper provides a brief overview of the main issues in digital
preservation, highlighting current research and standards efforts.
Electronic access
The Emerald Research Register for this journal is
available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0305-5728.htm
Introduction
“Preservation” and “digital” are two terms that
encompass wide areas of interest in information
management. Preservation has long been one of
the core functions of libraries and archives. It can
be examined at two major levels: issues of
meaningful collection and maintenance of content
and, in a more strict sense, aspects of permanence
of the media that support such content. The
growing pervasiveness of the second concept – the
digital – affects nowadays almost aspects of the
two levels referred above. The digital “factor”
changes the nature of content, its forms of
representation and media and usage, having deep
implications for preservation.
This introductory comment, however general, is
useful to introduce the global nature of
preservation concerns, and the fact that it goes far
beyond the traditional understanding of
preservation of analogue materials, essentially
focused on issues of media longevity. In fact, when
preservation and digital are brought together the
range of aspects involved expand significantly
beyond that, not only because of the diversity and
complexity of information and communication
technologies, but also because of implications in
metadata management, and of higher
organizational and policy aspects, which become
critical. This is especially important to underline
from the start, as the technological aspects of
digital preservation, being highly technical and
often the most visible side of the question, may
induce a fragmented and incomplete perception of
the subject.
The main objective of this paper is to provide an
introduction to digital preservation and a context
for many aspects tackled in the specialist articles
that are brought together in this issue of VINE.
Digital preservation: outlining the
problems at stake
The vast and ever growing literature of digital
preservation[1] from the last decade attests to the
emergence of a set of problems associated with the
long-term retention of digital objects, i.e. their
permanence and usability in respect to access,
maintenance of form and functionality and of
content understandability. The dangers of digital
volatility both in terms of storage media
permanence and of uncontrolled obsolescence of
technology – reflected in changes in operating
systems, file formats, input and output devices,
programming languages and software applications
– have been recognized as serious threats (Bennett,
VINE: The Journal of Information and Knowledge Management Systems
Volume 34 · Number 1 · 2004· pp. 6-16
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited · ISSN 0305-5728
DOI 10.1108/03055720410530933
6
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