Digital Collection Preservation: Archiving the Twenty First Century

Annotations Created by Sabin Visan

Definition of Project

This annotated bibliography seeks to increase understanding about the preservation of digital collections. The twenty-first century is a digital age where more and more material is not on paper, but online. Digital collections have sprung up all over the world, placing online personal memories, activities, thoughts and even profiles. Preserving these digital collections have begun to be a priority. The themes of this annotative bibliography are: issues, technology, and international standards. Keyword searches were performed on multiple databases such as the Wayne State Library website. From the results of the searches, journals from 2000 to 2017 who also discussed preservation of digital collections were chosen for further evaluations. A small number of journal articles were discovered on the topic of digital collection preservation. Ten resources were carefully chosen based on the author’s education and current line of work. Furthermore, journal articles were also chosen based on the number of references present in the article. This process of selection will ensure the authenticity of the information. The annotations examine the technology and standards behind the preservation of digital collections, and they also explore background information on how digital collections are created. It is important to carefully understand how these collections are created in order to better understand how to preserve them for future generations.

Annotations

Aker, T. (2013). Digital preservation of library materials. International Research: Journal of Library and Information Science, 3(1), 21-29. Retrieved from ProQuest database.

This journal provides the reader with information about technological requirements, challenges and background information about digital collections. This highly useful publication discusses the importance of preserving information. The article provides information on how library resource is selected for digital preservation in order so that future preservation of digital collection is efficient and cheep. This publication even discusses Open Archival Information System, which is essential in determining the future preservation of digital collections. This system looks right from the selection phase at how hard it will be both financially and technologically to preserve the digital collection.

Allen, R. B., & Johnson, K. A. (2008). Preserving digital local news. The Electronic Library, 26(3), 387-399. doi:10.1108/02640470810879527

This publication provides information about issues and approaches for both collecting and preserving digital local news archives. This publication is useful to the overall topic by discussing the preservation of news archives, digital collections from beyond the archival or library context which have received the most research attention. This useful publication discuss the selection process and storage amounts of the collection. The article explains that it “is not practical to save everything, especially not all video,…”(392) The authors focus on defining the parts of the collection that should be saved like only the most important news items. Funding is also an important part of preserving any digital collection. Diverse types of funding are presented better help with preservation of news archives. Some funding potentials come from places like government, commercial providers, and private foundations. Most news agencies today rely on private foundations who pay news agencies to display ads. Revenue from these ads help funds the preservation of news archives. The publication also provides technical information and issues with preserving digital collections. Table II displays the total number of gigabits required to preserve each news collection such as newspaper, radio, and television. For example, a television station could have an annual storage requirement of 730 000 GB. This presents an issue, which is sustainability of digital collection. The more data present the more maintenance is required to maintain the data. Should a mistake be made in maintenance we could lose the whole archive.

Beagrie, N. (2001). Preserving UK digital library collections. Program, 35(3), 215-226. doi:10.1108/EUM0000000006955

This publication provides the reader an inside look at preserving digital library collections in the United Kingdom. Covered in the paper are the various standards present within the U.K. and the different digital collection preservation systems that were under development. Beagrie displays different initiatives and reports developed by the government, which pertain to preservation of library collections. One such initiative entitled ‘The National Electronic Site Licensing Initiative’ talks about different issues limiting the use of electronic journals in the research community. Long-term access and preservation is one such issue addressed by this initiative. The initiative aims at solving these issues by having institutions agree on a strategy of providing “infrastructure to support long-term archiving…”(220) and collaborating on long-term preservation. The Consortium of University Research Libraries or CEDARS, which “addresses strategic, methodological and practical issues of preservation” (219). CEDARS are a consortium of various university research libraries with a goal of preservation of digital archives. This consortium developed a metadata schema to support digital preservation. This new metadata schema adds to the overall topic of preservation of digital archives by being the first test implementation to be compliant with Open Archival Information System.

Dougherty, W. C. (2009). Preservation of digital assets: One approach. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 35(6), 599-602. doi:10.1016/j.acalib.2009.08.008 This highly useful publication discusses MetaArchive, which is both a consortium of academic and special libraries and one of the standards for preservation of digital collections. The document discusses step-by-step how MetaArchive works including how this consortium was created. The most useful aspect this journal adds to the topic is other standards for preserving digital collections. All together this publication is useful to the overall topic because of the standard. This standard is important because multiple Universities within the United States are part of this.

Galyani Moghaddam, G. (2010). Preserving digital resources: Issues and concerns from a view of librarians. Collection Building, 29(2), 65-69. doi:10.1108/01604951011040152

The authors of this publication provide a highly descriptive look at the issues and concerns librarians have with preserving digital collection. This publication looks at three issues, which are technical, organizational, and most important legal. Preserving certain digital resource has certain technological challenges such as software, change in format, and original software. This highly useful document provides the reader a look at various organizational issues such as cost of preservation. The cost of digital preservation is high, certain digital collections require a lot of space and cost a lot to maintain simply because of outdated technology. Each archive faces technological, economical and legal issues when it comes to preservation of digital materials.

Gkoumas, G., & Lazarinis, F. (2015). Evaluation and usage scenarios of open source digital library and collection management tools. Program: Electronic Library and Information Systems, 49(3), 226-241. doi:10.1108/PROG-09-2014-0070 Within this publication resides educational information regarding open source software for digital collection management. The authors also provide various scenarios of digital libraries utilizing open source management tools. Management tools are the foundation of preserving digital collection without these tools librarians would have a tough time keeping these documents safe or even be able to access them at any time. Careful management of digital material is essential to preserving them for the future. This publication discusses tools used within universities from around the world. This publication helps bring the technology behind digital collection preservation to light in order to better understand how it all work in the grand scheme of things.

Oehlerts, B., & Liu, S. (2013). Digital preservation strategies at Colorado State University libraries. Library Management, 34(1/2), 83-95. doi:10.1108/01435121311298298

This highly useful publication provides standards for preservation of digital material. Through this document the authors write about local and international standards for digital preservation and digital collection preservation. This literature provides a thorough description of initiatives and services that help standardize the preservation effort. Using this publication, students can educate themselves about standards, software and practices associated with digital preservation. These practices are the very foundation of digital collection preservation. Without, these standards digital material could be lost forever both before the selection and during selection.

Perrin, J. M., Winkler, H. M., & Yang, L. (2015). Digital preservation challenges with an ETD collection — A case study at Texas Tech University. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 41(1), 98-104. doi:10.1016/j.acalib.2014.11.002

Some of the most important collection within a university are ETDs or Electronic Theses and Dissertations. These digital documents are the face of the archive and foundation of future research that will be done within the university. This highly useful journal presents challenges associated with preserving an ETD collection. This publication looks at the first ETD management system ever created. The authors also describe in-depth one of the biggest dangers to digital collections, data loss. The original university that created the management system had four data loss before the system was stabilized. However, this document doesn’t just discuss dangers, it also provides recovery and fixes to the problems that plagued the system. This document is highly useful educating the reader in technology and challenges associated with digital collection management.

Voutssas, J. (2012). Long-term digital information preservation: Challenges in Latin America. Aslib Proceedings, 64(1), 83-96. doi:10.1108/00012531211196729

This document provides a look at some of the challenges plaguing digital preservation within Latin America. Some of these challenges are not just found in Latin America but also here in the United States, such as economic, legal, technological and social factors. This document outlines each issue and expands it in order for the reader to better understand the issues facing digital collection preservation. On a daily basis thousands, even millions of data is created should we not have the foundation necessary to preserve these digital collections, they could be lost forever. Finally, this publication is useful because it analyzes digital preservation in Latin America. It analyzes stuff like storage, which is essential to preserving digital content. Should that storage be inadequate, we could loose part of our digital heritage.

Walters, T. O., & Skinner, K. (2010). Economics, sustainability, and the cooperative model in digital preservation. Library Hi Tech, 28(2), 259-272. doi:10.1108/07378831011047668

This publication is one of the most important articles regarding digital preservation of digital materials. This article describes the economics behind preserving digital material. In this economically tight world, library budgets might not have a lot of money to keep preserving their digital collection. This article opens the eyes of the reader to the actual cost of not preserving our digital heritage. While also looking at cost studies of preserving digital resources. All of this is done to present an economic and sustainable model for preserving digital collections. This model presents preservation through co-operation though MetaArchive. This means that the cost of preserving digital collections is spread out between multiple institutions, this lessens the financial burden on university libraries. This publication is highly useful in educating the reader about challenges and technology of digital collection preservation. These collections are our digital heritage, we need to preserve them for future generations to learn.