The digital archive: an example of long-term preservation. The state of the Universities of Spain (original) (raw)
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The Question of Responsibility for Long-term Digital Preservation
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Digital Archives and Preservation
SpringerReference
Center, http://irods.sdsc.edu SYNONYMS Persistent Archives DEFINITION Preservation is the set of processes that maintain the authenticity, integrity, and chain of custody of records for long periods of time. Authenticity is defined as the management of provenance information about the creation of the record. Integrity is defined as the ability to create an authentic copy. Chain of custody tracks all processing done to the record, including migration to new storage systems or to new data encoding formats. Digital preservation addresses the challenge of technology evolution by managing preservation properties independently of the choice of software and hardware systems. Preservation properties include the names used to identify archivists, records, and storage systems, and the preservation metadata which includes provenance information and administrative information about record management. The display and manipulation of digital data is maintained through the use of representation information that describes how the record can be parsed and interpreted. Digital preservation environments implement trustworthiness assessment criteria, enabling verification that the preservation properties are maintained over time. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND The preservation community bases digital preservation upon the same concepts that are used to preserve paper records. The preservation environment manages the authenticity, integrity, and chain of custody of the digital records. At least four approaches have been implemented that define the digital preservation processes and policies that are needed to maintain authenticity and integrity. 1) Diplomatics defines the required provenance information that describes the institution, event, and ingestion information associated with the documentation of an event. Examples of events are treaties and government communiqués. The records are assumed to be held forever. 2) The US National Archives and Records Administration associates records with a life-cycle data requirements guide. Each record is associated with a record group (institution), a record series (the set of records governed by a submission agreement), a file unit, and an entity. Each record series has a defined retention and disposition schedule. The arrangement of the records is governed by the submission order in the record series. Standard preservation processes include appraisal, accession, arrangement, description, preservation, and access. 3) The digital library community manages preservation within the context of a collection, with the required preservation metadata and the arrangement governed by the purpose under which the collection was formed. 4) The continuum model manages records within an active access environment. Records that are generated for one record series may be used as the basis for generating a new record series. The relationships between records within the multiple record series are tracked as part of their provenance. Each of these four communities imposes the preservation processes and preservation policies required to enforce their goals.