digitalpreservation

Digital preservation is the series of processes and policies that ensure the long-term viability of digital objects for future access and use. It encompasses born-digital materials, digitized originals, and their associated metadata. Goals include maintaining authenticity, integrity, and accessibility across changing technology environments, as well as enabling reproducibility and re-use over time. Preservation is an ongoing activity that covers creation, ingest, storage, management, and access.

Common threats to digital materials include hardware and software obsolescence, media degradation, bit rot, format obsolescence, incomplete metadata, and inconsistent rights management. Financial pressures, organizational change, and reliance on proprietary formats can also undermine long-term access. Effective digital preservation therefore requires clear policies, community standards, and sustainable repository structures.

Strategies used to preserve digital objects include migration (updating data to current formats), emulation (recreating original hardware or software environments), encapsulation (packaging data with preservation metadata), and normalization (applying standardized metadata and representations). Preservation metadata, such as provenance, fixity, and authenticity, guides trusted access and helps verify integrity. Regular integrity checks and secure, redundant storage are common technical practices.

Standards and reference models support interoperability and accountability. The OAIS (Open Archival Information System) model defines a framework for an archival information system. Related standards include PREMIS for preservation metadata, METS for packaging, and Dublin Core for descriptive metadata, as well as ISO 16363 for trusted repositories. Repositories often employ strategies like independent replication, format registries, and discard of obsolete data with proper migration plans.

Digital preservation is practiced by libraries, archives, museums, and research institutions worldwide, often within national and international initiatives to coordinate best practices and shared infrastructures.