LC21 A Digital Strategy for the Library of Congress (2000) / Chapter Skim
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4. Preserving a Digital Heritage
4. Preserving a Digital Heritage
Pages 105-121
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From page 105... ...
could use to collect digital materials aggressively and coordinate the development of distributed virtual collections. This chapter discusses the nature of LC's preservation mission in the changing digital context.
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From page 106... ...
The Library has also contributed to national preservation efforts, such as the development and adoption by many publishers of a standard for permanent paper and the coordination of preservation efforts under the Brittle Books Program, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Newspaper Project.1 PRESERVATION CHALLENGES FOR DIGITAL COLLECTIONS The Library faces challenges in digital preservation that are widely recognized and shared by many other libraries and archives. They include the following: · Fragile storage media Digital materials are especially vulnerable to loss and destruction because they are stored on fragile magnetic and optical media that deteriorate rapidly and that can fail suddenly from exposure to heat, humidity, airborne contaminants, faulty reading and writing devices, human error, and even sabotage.
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From page 107... ...
As long as traditional collecting mechanisms guarantee a steady stream of print, other analog materials, and tangible digital objects such as CD-ROMs into the Library's collections, there is an illusion Mat little significant content is being lost. The absence of significant digital content in me Library's collections removes a sense of urgency about digital preservation' and the lack of organizational capacity to preserve many types of born-digital information discourages the Library from taking on responsibilities that it 2It is worth noting that analog materials also suffer from this problem.
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From page 108... ...
One of the first steps that LC needs to take in adapting its collecting practices to accommodate born-digital information is to delineate clearly its responsibilities for preserving digital information. These preservation responsibilities may be loosely classified into three categories: · LC as creator, active collector, and primary custodian; · LC as key player in a fail-safe mechanism; and · LC as a partner In preserving distributed digital collections.
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From page 109... ...
The Library's role in registering copyright and enforcing mandatory deposit law creates a unique opportunity for the Library to collect digital information that might otherwise vanish from the historical record. To fulfill its role and meet its responsibilities, LC urgently needs to develop the orzaruzational and technical capacity to preserve digital deposits of long~ 1 ~ 1 to ~ term value, as discussed in Chapter 3.
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From page 110... ...
If libraries can provide timely services to their users without the complexity and expense of locally storing and preserving the content, then who is to assume preservation responsibilities? If the creator, publisher, or distributor is willing to preserve digital resources as long as it is financially viable, when should libraries step in to ensure long-term preservation?
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From page 111... ...
TEAMS supports both object and metadata storage and maintenance and has been implemented in a variety of corporate settings (for example, it is used by the Washington Post to manage its digital content)
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From page 112... ...
The OAIS model is important for digital preservation standards and strategies because it defines the functions and requirements for a digital archive through an international standard that vendors and producers of digital information can reference. If the OAIS reference model is widely adopted (and there are indications that it will be)
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From page 113... ...
Finding: Because of intellectual property law and the uncertainty of some publishers regarding the deposit of copies of digital works, institutions with long-term preservation responsibilities must seek and develop new means of ensuring continuing access to the valuable documentation of history, culture, and creativity. One possible approach is contractual agreements with rights holders who maintain digital information in off-site repositories, with provisions for deposit in a library or other institution should the publisher cease to maintain the information.
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From page 114... ...
The Library should coordinate such efforts with institutions doing related work, including other research libraries, the National Libraries of Agriculture and Medicine, the National Archives and Records Administration, other national libraries working to preserve their nations' digital heritage, and other organizations that have a legal mandate for long-term preservation or a commercial interest in it. The Library of Congress As a Participant in Shared Responsibilities for Long-term Preservation The committee's analysis suggests that the Library needs to articulate carefully a policy identifying the subset of digital materials for which it will assume long-term curatorial responsibility, taking into account Me following: · The burden of preserving digital collections is daunting and must be shared with other archiving institutions.
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From page 115... ...
As mentioned above, several European national libraries and the national libraries of Canada and Australia have launched programs to collect and preserve the digital portions of their national bibliographies. If the mechanisms to acquire and preserve the digital national bibliographies of some countries succeed, LC could be relieved of responsibility for preserving most digital materials from those countries.
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From page 116... ...
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From page 117... ...
PRESERVING A DIGITAL HERITAGE Hopi OC .' ....
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From page 118... ...
9In The Digital Dilemma, p. 210, it was similarly recommended that "Congress should enact legislation to permit copying of digital information for archival purposes, whether the copy is in the same format or migrated to a new format." LC is currently investigating intellectual property rights in the digital domain under a mandate from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which asks the Librarian of Congress to determine whether technical protection measures are having an adverse effect on the ability to make noninfringing uses of copyrighted works.
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From page 119... ...
· Archiving appropriate copies For many digital materials, the format most useful for current services (say, a PDF file or a GIF image) is not the most robust for long-term archiving (SGML, XML, or TIFF may serve better)
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From page 120... ...
The challenges of digital preservation make it easy to overlook the benefits that LC could enjoy by rapidly enhancing its capacity to collect and preserve digital information. Digital storage media are very compact, malting it possible to store enormous quantities of information in a very small amount of space.
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From page 121... ...
Although the Library has preserved many of its own digital resources, including the full-text databases of the THOMAS system, its own bibliographic databases, and the content, descriptive information, and retrieval capabilities of the National Digital Library Program, these efforts are not coordinated with each other or with efforts to address the larger problem of capturing and preserving born-digital content, nor is there any strategy, plan, or infrastructure to capture, manage, and preserve born-digital information that originates outside the Library. Recommendation: The Library should immediately form a high-level planning group to coordinate digital preservation efforts and develop the policies, technical capacity, and expertise to preserve digital information.
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