Saturday, April 02, 2016

Protecting digital material: Strategies for digital preservation

Protecting digital material: Strategies for digital preservation. Matthew Miguez. Illuminations. March 25, 2016.
     An important question for digital preservation is: "How can you tell when a computer file has been corrupted?" A way to tell is by using checksums, which are "character strings generated by a class of algorithms called hash functions or cryptographic hashes". At the beginning of the digital preservation process, you should create a checksum for each file or bitstream. By rerunning the hash and comparing that output to the original checksum, you can test the integrity of your digital files. If a checksum comparison fails, you need to restore a copy of the failed file and verify it against the original checksum. "Digital preservation is a rapidly developing field. New challenges requiring new solutions arise every day." 

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