Electronic Records Task Force Phase 2 Final Report

Electronic Records Task Force Phase 2 Final Report. John Butler, et al. University of Minnesota. August 23, 2017. [PDF, 68 pp.]
     The University of Minnesota Libraries sponsored an Electronic Records Task Force to monitor established workflows and to develop new workflows, policies, procedures and mechanisms for processing and providing access to electronic records. They are focused on the development of processing activities, best practices and guidelines. Creating finding aids, which are published online through ArchivesSpace, are the first step in providing access to electronic records. The long-term preservation of electronic records is a concern and this effort continues to be a work-in-progress. To keep up with the influx of electronic records, the Electronic Records Task Force provides the following recommendations:

1. Staffing: Hire a permanent full time employee to work exclusively with electronic records
2. Long-term Management: Create an Electronic Records Management Group to address ongoing electronic records needs
3. Preservation: Review current workflows and long-term management requirements to address immediate and long-term solutions for file backup, recovery, and preservation according to policies and standards
4. Security: Conduct a thorough review of security requirements
5. Equipment: Establish initial and ongoing financial support for hardware, software and collections
6. Access to Materials: Explore options for providing access to electronic records, including both access and preservation of these materials.

Project Tasks and Deliverables

1. Develop Workflows for Processing Ingested Collections
2. Define Processing Levels (minimal, intermediate, full)
3. Develop Access Methods that Address End-user Needs, Copyright, Data Privacy and other Information Security Requirements
4. Monitor Ingest Workflows and adjust as necessary

Additional notes:

• "In the long-term, a full-time dedicated staff person is the most responsible approach to working effectively and efficiently, to achieve quality work, and to maintain our leadership role in the field of electronic records management. This is arguably the only way to address the ingest and processing activities that assist with long-term access to and preservation of electronic materials. Without a dedicated person who has an in-depth understanding of evolving workflows and protocols and who can provide a consistent approach with curatorial staff, any headway in addressing the records being collected will be made slowly."
• The goal of processing unique electronic archival material is to make it available to end users, whether they be skilled researchers or a high school student working on a project.
• Given divergent requirements, a singular asset management, backup, and preservation solution may not be a feasible goal in either the near or long term. However, efforts can be made to establish a limited number of processes to manage the vast majority of preservation use cases.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Preservation with PDF/A

Preservation with PDF/A (2nd Edition). Betsy A Fanning. DPC Technology Watch Report 17-01. July 2017. [PDF 34pp.]  [Link updated]
     This report is an updated edition of the original Technology Watch Report 08-02, Preserving the Data Explosion: Using PDF (Fanning,2008). It looks at PDF/Archive as digital document file format for long-term preservation. The PDF/A versions of the PDF format have been developed as a family of open ISO Standards to address preservation of PDF files by removing features that pose preservation risks. It is important for preservation purposes to know how closely a file conforms to the  requirements defined in the standard. There are preservation risks that may exist in the standard PDF file format:

• any file type can be embedded;
• the primary document can be conformant as a static document, but the embedded files may not be static;
• embedded files may be infected by computer viruses;
• embedded files may have extended metadata requirements, may introduce unexpected dependencies or be subject to format obsolescence;
• embedded files may complicate matters relating to information security, data protection or the management of intellectual property rights.

By restricting some risk features and thus reducing preservation risks, the PDF/A format seeks to maximize:

• device independence;
• self-containment;
• self-documentation.

Some reasons why an organization might use PDF/A to preserve their digital documents, include:

• its standardized format for storing digital documents for long periods of time;
• it allows for digitally signed documents using the very latest digital signature software;
• it reliably displays special characters for mathematics and languages since all are embedded within the file;
• it displays correctly on any device as the author intended, including the reading order;
• platform independence;
• provision of fully searchable documents through Optical Character Recognition.

History and Features of PDF and PDF/A. The Standard was drafted in multiple in order to make it easier to implement the Standard. "Unfortunately, the committee’s philosophy of multiple parts resulted in confusion in the market place, making it more difficult for users to select the optimum file format." Users  may need to do a file format assessment based on their requirements that can help them decide which PDF/A Standard to implement.

Metadata helps effectively manage a file throughout its life cycle, as well assist in document discovery searches. "Establishing a long-term digital document preservation system requires careful consideration of the metadata that will be needed to locate and render documents years from now." Collecting metadata for the PDF/A documents in optional in the standard, except for the identifier, which is generated when the PDF/A file is created. Preservation metadata should:

• be appropriate to the materials;
• support interoperability;
• use standardized controlled vocabulary;
• include clear statements on the conditions and terms of use;
• be authoritative and verifiable;
• support the long-term management of the document.

Just because a file purports to be a PDF/A does not necessarily mean that it is. Format validation of a file can increase confidence a viewer will be able to render the file correctly.  A number of PDF/A validators are available.The development work on the PDF Standards is a continuing effort. There are additional preservation challenges in the format that are in the process of being addressed.

The report lists some recommendations, which are directed at groups that use the standard. They include:

• For those evaluating PDF/A as a digital preservation solution:
• Before adopting PDF/A as a preservation solution it is "essential to understand the organizational requirements and how PDF/A will support" the organization needs.
• PDF/A is not a preservation solution on its own a part of the wider preservation strategy that must be consistent with other components of the preservation infrastructure, such as backups, integrity checks and documentation.
• Different versions of PDF/A have different purposes, with different capabilities as well as different preservation risks. These should be understood and decisions should be documented and explained.
• Different vendors offer different tools to manage PDF/A that should be compared against your requirements..

• For organizations collecting and preserving digital data:
• While it may not be possible to control or restrict how documents are produced, it may be useful to give document creators guidance on what is desired.
• Embed PDF/A validation tools into preservation workflows and record the results to help manage the digital preservation risks associated with PDF/A files received.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Self-preservation: The Gibraltar National Archives uses cloud to safeguard its history

Self-preservation: The Gibraltar National Archives uses cloud to safeguard its history. Caroline Donnelly. ComputerWeekly. 13 September 2017.
     Many enterprises are familiar with the concept of retaining corporate data as part of their regulatory and compliance obligations. But some fail to understand that the data must be kept accessible. "While regulatory compliance is the key reason why many enterprises embark on this process in the corporate world, for the Gibraltar National Archives (GNA), digital preservation is an essential part of ensuring the annals of its cultural heritage and democratic history are safeguarded forever." After a long process of digitizing historical content, they realized that digitising content is not the same as preserving it. "The risk was we could have spent all this time and money doing digitisation only to lose [this information] a few years down the line because it is not preserved correctly.” Digital preservation is about:

• actively managing the file formats
• ensuring they remain readable in future
• being proactive and managing the content

Just as it is important to be able to prove the provenance of physical records, the fixity of the digital documents needs to be maintained.  “People often ask me when our digital preservation project will be finished. I tell them never, because every day we are collecting records. Every day we are archiving unique material from newspapers to government records all for generations to come.”

Digital Preservation Matters.

IBM and Sony cram up to 330 terabytes into tiny tape cartridge

IBM and Sony cram up to 330 terabytes into tiny tape cartridge. Sebastion Anthony. Ars Technica UK. August 2, 2017.
     IBM and Sony have developed a new magnetic tape system capable of storing 201 gigabits of data per square inch, or approximately 330 terabytes in a single palm-sized cartridge. To achieve this density, Sony developed a new type of tape that has a higher density of magnetic recording sites, and IBM Research developed new heads and signal processing technology to process the data from the "nanometre-long patches of magnetism". The new cartridges and tape drives, "when eventually commercialised, will be significantly more expensive because of the tape's complex manufacturing process."

Digital Preservation Matters.

Evaluating Your DPN Metadata Approach

Evaluating Your DPN Metadata Approach.  DPN Preservation Metadata Standards Working Group. July 27, 2017. [PDF, 6 pp.]

     This brief guide can help determine a clear metadata approach to recovering data "in the far future among unpredictable circumstances".  The document can help users create a sound approach to preserving your institution’s data and make decisions that fit with their own institutional needs.

The first section is:

What information is needed to understand and contextualize an object? It examines both descriptive and structural metadata.

Descriptive Metadata: for the purpose of identification and discovery of an object. Dublin

Core, MODS and VRAcore are common standards used for descriptive metadata.  

Structural Metadata: describes relationships between objects, such as pages in a book. The METS Structural Map can express  hierarchical relationships or parent/child relationships. The PREMIS "relationship" element can express version relationships.

The document also looks at how to:

• understand and contextualize a collection; 
• connect/relate objects to a collection; 
• connect/relate versions to each other; 
• connect metadata records to associated objects and collections;
• ensuring the authenticity of an object;
• ensuring the essential characteristics of the original are maintained in a data migration

Digital Preservation Matters.

DPN: Metadata Considerations for Deposits

Metadata Considerations for Deposits. DPN. August 2017.
     The Digital Preservation Network working groups have provided an overview of the types of metadata to consider while preparing deposits for DPN. Several areas are addressed:

1. DPN-specific metadata, especially DPN-specific metadata, DPN’s BagIt specification, Tag Directories and Bag Structure.
2. DuraCloud-specific metadata, while they do not restrict metadata they "indicate that local policies should be used to define metadata approaches".  Each snapshot contains four DuraCloud-created files: checksums (md5, sha265), a content properties file, and a collection-snapshot file  
3. Core descriptive metadata records. The DPN Preservation Metadata Standards Working Group examined minimal metadata records from a variety of member institutions to find common metadata schemas. This resulted in  a “core record,” or the "minimum level of information needed in order to understand digital assets at a later date," shown in a clear chart.
4. Significant properties of content. "In order for digital files to be usable and accessible in the long-term, it is important to recognize the importance of significant properties and to ensure that the properties of your digital materials are being documented in some form." They list content types, with examples of common significant properties. 

Digital Preservation Matters.

Universal Electronic Records Management Requirements

Universal Electronic Records Management Requirements. Courtney Anderson. National Archives Records Express. August 4, 2017.
     The National Archives has released the Universal Electronic Records Management Requirements as part of the Federal Electronic Records Modernization Initiative (FERMI). Universal ERM Requirements identify high level business needs for managing electronic records. The program requirements are derived from existing NARA regulations, policy, and guidance and are a starting point for agencies to use when developing system requirements. "Records management staff should work with acquisitions and IT personnel to tailor any final system requirements". The document contains an abstract, a glossary, and lists of lifecycle requirements and transfer format requirements.
There are six sections based on the lifecycle of electronic records management:

1.    Capture
2.    Maintenance and Use
3.    Disposal
4.    Transfer
5.    Metadata
6.    Reporting

The requirements are either “program” requirements, relating to the design and implementation of policies and procedures, or “system” requirements, providing technical guidance for creating or acquiring ERM tools, which also indicate “Must Have” or “Should Have”. NARA will be supporting these requirements going forward and will be updating them to stay current with changes in technology, regulations and guidance products.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Elsevier Acquires bepress

Elsevier Acquires bepress. Roger C. Schonfeld.  Society for Scholarly Publishing; The Scholarly Kitchen. Aug 2, 2017.
     Elsevier announces its acquisition of bepress. In a move entirely consistent with its strategy to pivot beyond content licensing to preprints, analytics, workflow, and decision-support, Elsevier is probably the foremost single player in the institutional repository area. There is some concern this acquisition will allow them to co-opt open access. The bepress product, Digital Commons, has more than 500 participating institutions, predominantly US colleges and universities.


bepress Joins Elsevier, with Exciting Potential for Growth. Press release. bepress. Aug 2, 2017.
bepress has joined Elsevier, the largest content provider in the world. The management is "confident that this is the right choice for bepress and for our community. Both parties are committed to sustaining the elements that make bepress bepress, and supporting your open access initiatives."

Digital Preservation Matters.

Library Preservation Workflows: Importing, Exporting, and Managing Content

Library Preservation Workflows: Importing, Exporting, and Managing Content. Chris Erickson. June 12, 2017. [PDF slides]
     This is my presentation at the Eight Annual Rosetta's Advisory Group meeting held in June at the wonderful University of Sheffield. This is my favorite conference because of the attendees, the topics discussed, the interaction with the Ex Libris employees who attend, and the many things I learn about digital preservation and Rosetta, in the Advisory meeting and in the accompanying Rosetta Users Group. I hate to see this conference end.

The short presentation is a view of some of the ongoing changes and refinements we have made to our digital preservation workflow in the past year. We have worked to streamline our processes, both because of the increased volume of content we ingest into Rosetta, and also the desire to minimize the file movement and copying during the processing. In addition, we have used our preservation repository to recover documents in our access systems that became unavailable.

During the year we have updated our digital preservation policies to help determine our preservation selection workflow. They include:

• Digital Preservation Decision Form
• Priorities for preserving digital content
• Levels of preservation actions

The changes have helped with a smoother transition from selection and acquisition, processing and SIP creation and submission to Rosetta, and the preservation disposition.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Digital Preservation Workflow Curriculum

Digital Preservation Workflow Curriculum. Mary Molinaro. DPN, AVPreserve. August 2, 2017.
     DPN and AVPreserve have developed a "digital preservation workflow curriculum to share with DPN members and others in the digital preservation community". This workshop curriculum, released with a Creative Commons license, will provide participants with skills and knowledge to implement and manage a digital preservation program within their organization. They ask that the terms of the CC-BY-SA license be observed.

The workshop modules show the requirements of a digital preservation ecosystem from the viewpoints of governance / program management, as well as asset management. This is not an introduction to digital preservation or the OAIS model; instead it looks at the 'why' and 'how' questions of "making digital preservation an underlying, operational function of an organization". The curriculum, which is available here in a zip file, consists of:

• DPN Findings Briefing & Workshop Outline  (PDF) 
• Digital Preservation Workshop Curriculum  (PDF)

• Module 1:  Programmatic Digital Preservation  (PowerPoint)
• Module 2:  Selection  (PowerPoint)
• Module 3:  Preparing for Submission  (PowerPoint)
• Module 4:  Submission & Ingest  (PowerPoint)
• Module 5:  Post Submission  (PowerPoint)
• Module 6:  Sustainability  (PowerPoint)

Digital Preservation Matters.

ePADD 4.0 Released

ePADD 4.0 Final. July 21, 2017.
    This is the latest release of ePADD, a software tool "developed by Stanford University's Special Collections & University Archives that supports archival processes around the appraisal, ingest, processing, discovery, and delivery of email archives."

The software is comprised of four modules:

1. Appraisal: Allows users to gather and review email archives 
2. Processing: Tools to arrange and describe email archives.
3. Discovery: Tools to share a view of email archives with users through web discovery 
4. Delivery: Enables repositories to provide access within a reading room environment.

System Requirements:

• OS: Windows 7 SP1 / 10, Mac OS X 10.10 / 10.11 
• Memory: 8 GB RAM (4 GB RAM allocated to the application by default) 
• Browser: Chrome 50/51, Firefox 47/48 
• Windows installations: Java Runtime Environment 64-bit, 8u101 or later required

ePADD Installation and User Guide
ePADD Github website

Digital Preservation Matters.

Email preservation: How hard can it be?

Email preservation: How hard can it be? Edith Halvarsson. Digital Preservation at Oxford and Cambridge. 7 July, 2017.
      The post summarises highlights of the Digital Preservation Coalition’s briefing on email preservation. What is email? It is "an object, several things and a verb”, a heavily linked and complex object, like the web. "Retention decisions must be made, not only about text content but also about email attachments and external web links. In addition, supporting features (such as instant messaging and calendars) are increasingly integrated into email services and potential candidates for capture."
Email is also a cultural and social practice; capturing relationships and structures of communication is an additional layer to preserve. 

What is being done, or can be done?  Migration is the most common approach to email preservation. EML and Mbox, which is a family of formats, are the most common formats migrated to. They have  different approaches to storing content. Others choose to unpack content which provides a way to display emails and normalise content within them. The emulation approach provides access to content within the original operating environment. Also, ePADD, an open source tool, provides functions for processing and appraisal of Mbox files, but ha other features

There are still questions and issues still to explore, particularly regarding web links. "Email archives may be more valuable to historians as they acquire critical mass".  Some thing that institutions can do are:

• Participate with the  Email Preservation Task Force
• Share your workflows to the Email Preservation Task Force and the community
• Run trial migrations between different email formats such as PST, Mbox and EML and blog about your finding
• Support open source tools such as ePADD and make them sustainable! 

Digital Preservation Matters.

Six Priority Digital Preservation Demands

Six Priority Digital Preservation Demands. Somaya Langley. Digital Preservation at Oxford and Cambridge. 13 July, 2017.
     Post discusses the gap between what activities need to be done as part of a digital stewardship end-to-end workflow and the maturity level of digital preservation systems. It presents a list of "my six top ‘digital preservation demands’ (aka user requirements)":

• Integration with  other systems: A digital preservation ‘system’ is only one piece of a much larger puzzle. In the ‘digital ecosystem’  end-to-end digital stewardship workflows are of primary importance. Metadata and/or files should flow from one system to another.  
• Standards-based:  Libraries rely on standards. "If we don’t use (or fully implement) existing standards, this means we risk mangling data, context or meaning; potentially losing or not capturing parts of the data; or just wasting a whole lot of time".
• Error Handling: With more work and few people, we "have to be smart about how we work. This requires prioritisation." The preservation workflows need smarter systems to aid the processes, especially understanding and resolving errors from the many third-party tools. 
• Reporting: The types of reports needed include: 
• High-level reporting – annual reports, monthly reports, reports to managers, projections, costings etc.)
• Collection and preservation management reporting 
• Reporting for preservation planning purposes, based on preservation plans
• Provenance: Support for identifying where a file has come from. This is often handled by metadata and documenting changes as Provenance Notes. The essential metadata (administrative, preservation, structural, technical) needs to be captured and retained.
• Managing Access Rights:  We must ensure we can provide access to the content to support both the content and users in a variety of ways, particularly the new ways they want to use the content. 

"It’s imperative to keep in mind the whole purpose of preserving digital materials is to be able to access them...." Addressing these six concerns may not be easy, but we need to "make iterative improvements, one step at a time."

Digital Preservation Matters.

Integrating Research Data management and digital preservation systems at the University of Sheffield

Integrating Research Data management and digital preservation systems at the University of Sheffield. Chris Loftus. Digital Preservation Coalition. 31 May 2017.
     The University Library is leading the active management and curation of research data within the institution. This includes implementing a research data catalogue and repository powered by Figshare. They safeguard library collections and University assets of the University using Rosetta, a digital preservation platform from Ex Libris. "We are now working with figshare and Ex Libris to integrate both services to provide seamless preservation of published research data across the research lifecycle." Which will

• provide a complete lifecycle data management service for the university’s research community; 
• identify, understand and act on risks associated with preserving data sets; 
• better inform advice and guidance around use of data formats for sharing and preservation purposes; and 
• encourage researchers to share their data more openly with others by guaranteeing the long term sustainability of that data.

Initial integration work uses the OAI-PMH protocol and METS packages to transfer content efficiently. Rosetta will be the dark archive, with figshare the interface for researchers and external users.

File formats issues: Research data is often in niche and proprietary formats. Of the material currently deposited in the archive, only a small percentage was recognised by a Droid survey. They will need to invest some time to identify and plan for these formats, and hopefully the work will be of use to the wider digital preservation community.

Metadata: They plan to improve the quality and volume of metadata accompanying research data. Material from researchers often lacks needed metadata, which can cause future data access issues. They are investigating solutions.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Videotapes Are Becoming Unwatchable As Archivists Work To Save Them

Videotapes Are Becoming Unwatchable As Archivists Work To Save Them. NPR: All Things Considered. Scott Greenstone. June 3, 2017.
     Research suggests that magnetic tapes, like video tapes, aren't going to live beyond 15 to 20 years, sometimes called the "magnetic media crisis." Magnetic information on tapes will slowly fade, and when it diminishes too much, the information on the tape will be lost. There are groups trying to migrate the tapes before the content is unrecoverable. Part of this process is to identify what is on the tapes and which tapes need to be preserved long term.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Ex Libris joins the Open Preservation Foundation

Ex Libris joins the Open Preservation Foundation. Becky McGuinness. Press Release. Open Preservation Foundation. June 1, 2017.
     The Open Preservation Foundation announced that Ex Libris is its newest charter member. "Ex Libris’ Rosetta is an end-to-end digital asset management and preservation solution for libraries, archives, museums and other institutions, enabling institutions to safely and securely collect, manage, publish, deliver, and ensure longevity for digital information of many different types. With Rosetta’s unique content preservation planning module and its Format Library knowledge base, shared by the entire Rosetta community, institutions can identify format risks, evaluate mitigation alternatives, and select the best preservation actions."  "Rosetta reflects Ex Libris involvement in industry standards and commitment to extensibility and open architecture."  "Rosetta itself is based on an open architecture that allows customers to easily use Rosetta with external tools and plugins such as JHOVE and other open-source software. By supporting OPF, we can further improve open-source tools for the benefit of all."
 

Digital Preservation Matters.

Design Requirements for Better Open Source Tools

OSS4Pres 2.0: Design Requirements for Better Open Source Tools. Heidi Elaine Kelly. bloggERS! April 25, 2017.
     Free and Open Source Software need to "integrate easily with digital preservation institutional systems and processes.” The FOSS Development Requirements Group created a design guide for to ensure easier adoption of open-source tools and their integration with other software and tools.

Minimum Necessary Requirements for FOSS Digital Preservation Tool Development. The premise is that "digital preservation is an operating system-agnostic field."

Necessities

• Provide publicly accessible documentation and an issue tracker
• Have a documented process so people can contribute to development, report bugs, and suggest new documentation
• Every tool should do the smallest possible task really well; if you are developing an end-to-end system, develop it in a modular way in keeping with this principle
• Follow established standards and practices for development and use of the tool
• Keep documentation up-to-date and versioned
• Follow test-driven development philosophy
• Don’t develop a tool without use cases, and stakeholders willing to validate those use cases
• Use an open and permissive software license to allow for integrations and broader use

Recommendations

• Have a mailing list or other means for community interaction
• Establish community guidelines
• Provide a well-documented mechanism for integration with other tools/systems
• Provide functionality of tool as a library, separate UI from the actual functions
• Package tool in an easy-to-use way, that supports any dependencies
• Provide examples of functionality for potential users
• Consider the long-term sustainability of the tool
• Consider a way for internationalization of the tool  

Digital Preservation Matters.

Using Open-Source Tools to Fulfill Digital Preservation Requirements

OSS4EVA: Using Open-Source Tools to Fulfill Digital Preservation Requirements. Marty Gengenbach, et al. Code4Lib. 2016-10-25.
     Open-source software has played an increasingly prominent role in digital preservation, such as LOCKSS, DSpace, and DROID. The number and variety of such tools has increased, there was a growing need among preservationists to assess how and when to adopt particular tools so that they could better support their institutions’ specific requirements and workflows.  Open-source projects allows the user community to contribute by developing and documenting tools.

There are some challenges with open source programming.

• Perceptions of instability:  One challenge is the perception that these tools are "inherently unstable and therefore present a risk". 
• Resources and funding: Administrators often are reluctant to commit resources to an open source project. Funding problems can threaten the long-term sustainability of open source tools.
• System updates: Open source tools require regular patches, updates, and upkeep. Without this, the tool would be outdated, and open to security holes. "The choice to maintain an unsupported version of a particular open-source tool simply because it meets (or has been customized to meet) an organization’s needs is problematic. For what an institution may stand to gain from this tool in terms of functionality and local integration, it may stand to lose in terms of the stability of a mainstream code release, the risk to information security, and the likelihood that the tool in question will become increasingly less functional and reliable as it ages".
• Integration. Integrating open-source tools into institutional workflows can be a challenge, taking into account software dependencies, system requirements, and local configuration to put the tools into a production environment. This can require a considerable time and resources. 

One of the possible benefits is that institutions can customize open source tools for use within a specific context, but that comes with its own hurdles, such as reducing the ability to draw on the user community.  The digital preservation open source landscape has evolved from a scattered set of standalone tools designed to complex software environments. "Nevertheless, these tools still are not watertight." There are real concerns about open-source tools that can pose serious risks to collections.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Personal Digital Archiving Guide Part 1: Preservation Planning

Personal Digital Archiving Guide Part 1: Preservation Planning. Scott Witmer. Bits and Pieces. April 26, 2017.
      Digital materials require active intervention to be usable over time, since technology is constantly changing. "The more we use these files or transfer them from one technology to another, the greater the potential for data corruption. Digital files also run the risk of deletion due to accident or disaster. Having a preservation plan can mitigate the risks of obsolescence, erasure, or other forms of data loss." This post lists some simple suggestions for organizing digital files for long-term preservation, although everyone will have their own methods. Some digital preservation is better than none.

Preservation Steps for Personal Digital Collections:

• Identify digital materials to save. Make a list or inventory
• Gather the files you want to save into one place
• Select what you really want to safe; define the scope of your digital collection
• Organize your digital files and add descriptive information to the file name, or other important information
• Give your files short, meaningful names, preferable when creating the files
• Use a meaningful directory structure to organize the files 
• Back-up the files and have multiple copies:  
• 3 copies 
• 2 of the copies on 2 different types of storage media 
• 1 copy in a different location  

Digital preservation is an ongoing process, so files and storage technology should be checked periodically.

Digital Preservation Matters.

Sustaining The Value: The British Library Digital Preservation Strategy 2017-2020

Sustaining The Value: The British Library Digital Preservation Strategy 2017-2020. British Library. January 2017.
     The strategy document is intended to guide the Library’s digital preservation activities for the next few years. It identifies strategic priorities as well as the the roles and responsibilities of those who will deliver the strategy.  The digital preservation challenges include technological obsolescence, media integrity, bit rot, digital rights management, metadata and others. Also important are

• Proactive Lifecycle management
• Integrity & validation
• Fragility of storage media

"Digital Preservation is the combination of actions and interventions required throughout the digital content lifecycle to ensure continued and reliable access to authentic digital materials." Digital preservation is not just a technical challenge. "It necessitates an ongoing and typically recursive series of actions and interventions throughout the lifecycle to ensure continued & reliable access to authentic digital objects,for as long as they are deemed to be of value."  

Their vision is to make sure that "end-to-end workflows are in place that deliver and preserve our digital collections in a trusted long term digital repository so that they may be accessed by future users.” Other notes:

• Control and consistency throughout the lifecycle is therefore an essential aspect of large scale, sustainable preservation.   
• Priorities include: 
• Changes to the existing technical repository infrastructure 
• Ingest digital collections with metadata for long term preservation
• Management and reporting will be documented and provide assurance and evidence of preservation 
• Deliver content to users from the long term repository in a timely and reliable manner
• Also important is to embed the skills and resources needed to sustain this approach into the future.

Related posts:

• British Library Digital Preservation Strategy
• Collecting Digital Content at the Library of Congress
• Building a Digital Preservation Strategy
• Establishing Digital Preservation At the University of Melbourne

Digital Preservation Matters.