[SPG_Active_Members] State of the Art in Long-Term Digital Preservation

[H.M. Gladney]

Ref: S. Ross, Digital Preservation, Archival Science and Methodological
Foundations for Digital Libraries, 11th European Conference on Digital
Libraries (ECDL), Budapest, September 2007.  Copy available at
http://www.ecdl2007.org/Keynote_ECDL2007_SROSS.pdf

This paper is as close to anything I have seen to expressing a digital
preservation community(*) view of the state of the art.  It is also
remarkably candid with its opinion that progress (in that community) has
pretty much stalled.  My summary, extracted from something I'm just now
writing, is attached.

If you were to read this paper and peek at the articles it cites, you would
be well informed.

Cheerio, Henry
 
H.M. Gladney, Ph.D.  http://home.pacbell.net/hgladney

(*) Long-term preservation of digitally represented information has been
discussed for over a decade in articles by librarians, archivists, and
information scientists, an informal group sometimes called the digital
preservation community (DPC).  This literature is mostly disjoint from that
of computer science, software engineering, and information technology
industry.  From the perspective of an engineer accustomed to the pace of IT
research and development, progress reported in the DPC literature is
surprisingly slow. 
International conferences and workshops occur in rapid succession.  However,
these seem to discuss little more than LDP urgency and social processes for
collaboration, without addressing novel concepts or engineering specifics.
A recent notice is typical:
	Leading figures from the international science community will meet
today to try and save the digital records of the world’s scientific
knowledge from being lost.  Policy-makers from the European Commission and
national governments will convene with world-renowned research organisations
and digital preservation experts at a strategic conference in Brussels.
They will discuss creation of an Alliance and European infrastructure for
preserving and providing permanent access to digital scientific information
currently stored in formats which are fast becoming obsolete and growing
exponentially in volume.	Jackson


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