The Challenges And Importance Of Digital Preservation

The following tasks will be carried out as part of the proposed research
• Determine the need and importance of digital preservation • To determine the challenges associated with digital preservation
• Outline the principles on which digital preservation is based • Describe specific preservation strategies for long-term preservation
• Define methods and types by which digital preservation can happen
Methodology and Approach
Firstly we have to make sure how digital preservation is working in the real world, what are the main challenges it is facing and what are its solutions.
How digital preservation is working?
The purpose of conservation is to ensure the protection of information of lasting value for access by present and future generations. …show more content…
What are the challenges and requirement of digital preservation?
 Recording media for digital materials are vulnerable to deterioration and catastrophic loss, and even under ideal conditions they are short lived relative to traditional format materials. The archivists have been battling with acid-based papers, thermo-fax, nitrate film, and other fragile media for decades. They are the first reusable media and they can weaken rapidly, making the time frame for decisions and actions to prevent loss is a matter of years, not decades.
 More challenging than media fragility is the problem of oldness in retrieval and playback technologies. Innovation in the computer hardware, storage, and software industries continues at a rapid pace, usually yielding greater storage and processing capacities at lower cost. Devices, processes, and software for recording and storing information are being replaced with new products and …show more content…
To preserve digital materials with mass storage capabilities and in accessible and usable formats, it is necessary to eliminate some basic requirements. There are two ways to examine digital preservation requirements: from the perspective of users of digital materials and from the view of libraries, archives and other custodians who assume responsibility for their maintenance, preservation and distribution.
Libraries and archives will not fulfill their preservation missions if they do not satisfy the requirements of their users by preserving the materials in formats that allow the types of analysis that users wish to perform.
The potential uses of digital materials are varied, unpredictable and almost infinite. The ability to establish the authenticity and integrity of a source is critical for users, whether it is generated by an individual, an institutional enterprise or produced through a formal publication. The mechanisms that will allow users to establish authenticity require that files and libraries store much more than the content of digital documents.
Attributes such as formal document structures, metadata documenting the maintenance and use history of the document, date and time stamps, and a series of references between documents are essential to determine