Thursday, September 01, 2016

Digital Preservation: Keep calm and get on with it!

Digital Preservation: Keep calm and get on with it! Matthew Addis. Archives and Records Association 2016. 30 August 2016.
     This is a presentation about simple and practical steps towards digital preservation using open source tools best practices. The benefits of a digital preservation strategy is increasingly clear, but implementing the strategy can be overwhelming. The presentation lists resources and tools, such as the Digital Preservation Coalition handbook, the COPTR tool website, DROID, and the Data Assessment Framework. Sometimes complex resources can also be overwhelming and make decisions more difficult. "If you think that you’re not able to ‘do enough’ or ‘do it properly’, then this can result in doing nothing because this feels like the next best thing." But doing nothing has serious consequences in the digital world. "It’s almost always better to get on and do something than it is to do nothing." The presentation also refers to ‘parsimonious preservation’ or starting with minimal actions. Understand what you have and try to keep it safe through safe copies. It is important to understand formats and to use the tools to keep the content safe. "File format identification gives the information needed to make decisions." Another important part is to start simple and add functionality as you go. The maturity model from the National Digital Stewardship Alliance is a good guide.

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