Friday, April 18, 2008

Digital Preservation Matters - 18 April 2008

Definitions of Digital Preservation (updated link). American Library Association. April 15, 2008.
A working group within the Preservation and Reformatting Section has drafted a definition of ‘digital preservation’ to promote an understanding of digital preservation within the library community. They created a short, medium, and long version to accommodate a variety of needs. They express “the need for a declared intention to preserve, a plan for doing so, and engagement in measurable activities to realize that plan.”
Short Definition: Digital preservation combines policies, strategies and actions that ensure access to digital content over time.
Medium Definition: Digital preservation combines policies, strategies and actions to ensure access to reformatted and born digital content regardless of the challenges of media failure and technological change. The goal of digital preservation is the accurate rendering of authenticated content over time.
Long Definition: Digital preservation combines policies, strategies and actions to ensure the accurate rendering of authenticated content over time, regardless of the challenges of media failure and technological change. Digital preservation applies to both born digital and reformatted content.
Digital preservation policies document an organization’s commitment to preserve digital content for future use; specify file formats to be preserved and the level of preservation to be provided; and ensure compliance with standards and best practices for responsible stewardship of digital information.
Digital preservation strategies and actions address content creation, integrity and maintenance, which are listed in the definition.

The PREMIS editorial committee has updated the data dictionary. It is a resource for preservation metadata in digital archiving systems. Preservation metadata is defined as “the information a repository uses to support the digital preservation process” and includes administrative (including rights and permissions), technical, and structural. It defines core metadata as “things that most working preservation repositories are likely to need to know in order to support digital preservation.”
PREMIS schema are available from The Library of Congress website.

The newsletter includes three items:
A report of the Section 108 copyright study group. Some highlights from that:
  • Museums should be eligible for section 108
  • A new exception should permit qualified libraries and archives to make preservation copies of at-risk published works prior to any damage or loss. Access to these “preservation-only” copies will be limited.
  • A new exception should permit libraries and archives to capture and reproduce publicly available online content for preservation purposes and to make those copies accessible to users for private study, research or scholarship.
  • Libraries and archives should be permitted to make a limited number of copies as reasonably necessary to create and maintain a single replacement or preservation copy.
The Chronopolis project is a datagrid framework being developed by the San Diego Supercomputer Center and others, for preserving content and developing best practices.
The Washington State Digital Archives is leading a multi-state government project for archiving local state government data.

Windows Life-Cycle Policy for XP. Microsoft. Updated: April 3, 2008.
Microsoft has updated the end of life-cycle information for XP license availability and support to June 30, 2008. The end date for XP Home on Ultra Low-Cost PCs is extended to June 30, 2010, or one year after the general availability of the next version of Windows. A final service pack for XP is expected by the end of April: Windows XP SP3 out by end of April.

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