Costs of Digital Preservation

There are concerns on over the cost of digital preservation. Some issues associated with digital preservation are that it is an ongoing committment and has continuous resources. There is also the need for immediate "creation to preservation" in digital objects. Therefore, the costs of digital materials start at creation of the resource. Digitization projects require that digital files must be budgeted for and considered from their creation. With costs always rising, an institutions preservation strategy should be appropriate to the percieved value of the digital object.
Two good articles on the Costs of preserving digital items are Chapman, S. (n.d.) Costs of Digital Preservation and Russell, K., & Weinberger, E. (2000). Cost Elements of Digital Preservation.

http://journals.tdl.org/jodi/article/viewFile/jodi-113/99

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/cedars/documents/clW01r.html

Digital Preservation Options

Preservation Options

Bitstream Copying- backing up your data. Will be beneficial in the case of hardware or media failure, but is not a long term maintenance technique.

Refreshing- "to copy digital information from long-term storage medium to another of the same type" without changing the digital object itself.

Persistent Media- this method helps diminish losses from media deterioration. It does not help in the case of "catastrophic physical loss," or media obsolescence.

Digital Archaeology- explicitly an emergency recovery strategy

Analog Backups- converts digital objects into analog form with the use of analog media. Can preserve content and protect from obsolescence, but sacrifices digital qualities such as share ability.

Migration- "to copy data or convert data from one technology to another, preserving the essential characteristics of the data." Critics say that migration does not ensure the authenticity nor the integrity of the digital document.

Replication- "to copy in order to enhance the longevity of digital documents while maintaining their authenticity and integrity through copying and the use of multiple storage location."

Standards- adhering to well-recognized standards will aid in problems of compatibility.

Normalization- "is a formalized implementation of reliance on standards."

Canonicalization- can determine if the essential characteristics of a document have remained intact through conversion from one format to another-this method has yet to be implemented.

Emulation- "Combines software and hardware to reproduce the performance of another computer of a different design." This allows programs to operate in a different environment than what it was created for. This has been successful in computer games, but widespread use as a long-term digital preservation strategy, it has not been tested.

Encapsulation- a technique of grouping together a digital object and the meta data necessary to provide access to that object

Hendley, T. (1998). Comparison of Methods & Costs of Digital Preservation. British Library Research & Innovation Centre
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/services/elib/papers/tavistock/hendley/hendley.html

British Library iPres 2008
http://www.bl.uk/ipres2008/

Digital Preservation Management
http://www.icpst.umich.edu/dpm/

Preservation Planning

Digital Preservation encompasses activites that will extend the "usable life" of machine-readable information. This means long-term maintenence and accessability to ever-outdated forms of technology. Many digital preservation strategies exist, but no one strategy is appropriate for all data types, situations and institutions.