Keep Calm and do Practical Records Preservation

Keep Calm and do Practical Records Preservation. Matthew Addis. Conference on European Electronic Data Management and eHealth Topics. 23 May 2016.
     The presentation looks at some of the practical tools and approaches that can be used to ensure that digital content remains safe, secure, accessible and readable over multiple decades. It covers  mostly "practical and simple steps towards doing digital preservation for electronic content" but also some ways to determine how well prepared you are for preservation.  Some things you need to show:

• ongoing integrity and authenticity of content in an auditable way.
• that content is secured and access is controlled.
• ability to access content when needed that is readable and understandable.
• ability to do this over decades, which is a very long time in the IT world 
• have an archivist with clear responsibility for making all this happen
• have appropriate processes that manage all the risks proportionally.

A really simple definition of Digital Preservation from the Library of Congress: "the management of content in a pro-active way so that it remains accessible and usable over time." 

"Focus on the basic steps that need to be done now in order to support something bigger and better in the future." Know what you have and get the precious stuff in a safe storage environment.

Digital Preservation Matters.