Abstract
In recent decades, libraries, archives, and museums have created digital collections that comprise millions of objects to provide long-term access to them. One of the core preservation activities deals with the evaluation of appropriate formats used for encoding digital content. The development of science has entered the 4th paradigm, where data has become much more intensive than in the previous period. This situation raises new challenges in managing research data, especially related to data preservation in digital format, which allows research data to be utilized for the long term. The development of science in the 4th paradigm allows researchers to collaborate with and reuse research datasets produced by a research group. To take advantage of each other's data, there is a principle that must be understood together, namely the FAIR principle, an acronym for findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable.
TopIntroduction
Libraries, archives and museums have created digital collections with millions of objects in the last decades as the impact of technology development. Some issue arise from the transformation of the collection format is to ensure the accesibility for the long term. One of the main activities of preservation has to do through evaluating suitable formats that are used to encode digital content. The threat to the preservation of a particular file format is difficult to assess due to technological advances (Graf & Gordea, 2014).
Conway defines the long-term digital archive as the preservation of all digital materials (born digital objects and those that come from the digitization process) (Conway, 2010). This storage is intended to guarantee for a long period of time that the digital information: remains accessible, stored in a secure, and understandable way for future users (so that it can be used correctly in the future). These fellows can be less or more stringent depending on the conservation context: requirements of the law; Regulations; sensitive documents that can be used as evidence; Patrimonial or scientific information. The long-term aspect of digital preservation is defined by the consultative committee for space data systems (CCSDS) as “long enough to be concerned with the impacts of changing technologies, including support for new media and data formats, or with a changing user community. Long Term may extend indefinitely” (CCSDS, 2012). For instances, scientific data must be kept indefinitely so that researchers can reuse this data for further studies and experiments. Reusability of scientific data is the main idea
A survey of the SPEC kit conducted by the Association of Research Libraries in 2011 on the digital preservation shows a further differentiation in the importance of the digital preservation.
The responses from the participants indicate that digital preservation can mean: (i) the preservation of rare and brittle materials through digitization, a mechanism for reducing the direct handling or manipulation of the materials; or (ii) the preservation of licensed digital content, e.g., journal articles; or (iii) the preservation of locally digitized content, typical materials from special collections or archives; or (iv) the preservation of born-digital content, such as institutional records (Mcmillan & Skinner, 2011).
From a broader perspective, all these types of activities which create digitally born material requires digital preservation (Wilson, 2017).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Information Units: This implies that a future system must be able to interpret the representation of the information units received, so that this information can be reproduced as the original creator intended it to be. Being able to comply with provenance, integrity, and authenticity.
Content Specialist: Is someone who has a role to assess the content to be preserved. Content specialists conduct an analysis to determine whether the collection is worthy of long-term preservation with the stages of selection, appraisal, management, and digital curation.
Medium-Term Preservation: Continuous access to digital materials beyond technological changes for a specific period, but not for an indefinite period.
Short-Term Preservation: Access to digital materials for a defined period while usage is predicted, but not beyond the foreseeable future or until it becomes inaccessible due to technological changes.
Data Expert: Subject experts, data experts need to understand the underlying technical framework. Starting with capturing, processing, manipulating, and managing activities in their respective fields
Long-Term Preservation: Permanent access to digital materials or at least to the information contained in them for an indefinite period.
Data and Information Services Unit: Responsible for institutional use of data, both for uploading and uploading data.
Metadata Specialist: Metadata specialist is a person who describes digital objects so that digital objects can be easily read and understood and traced both by humans and by machines.
Infrastructure Technique: Includes the addition of new components to the preservation environment to support the growth of dynamic collections (increased storage space) or to reduce long-term digital archive costs.
Creator: The creator or owner of a digital work who gives the library the right to digitally preserve it.