Page 73 - Building Digital Libraries

CHAPTER 4

The Maturity Model

The development of a digital preservation plan and system requires an
organization to identify the level and preservation activities that it will be
able to support. For most organizations, different material types will likely
have different preservation activities associated with them. For example, an
organization’s plan to support high-resolution digital video would likely dif-
fer greatly from how it would handle digital texts or photography. Likewise,
for institutions hosting repositories or storing digital data, the level and
preservation activities that an organization could apply to a preservation
TIF file would likely be very different from those for a GIS data file.
To help cultural heritage organizations better understand and define the
level of preservation activities that can be supported, the Digital Preserva-
tion Maturity Model was developed. The model breaks down preservation
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activities into six different activities. (See figure 4.2.)
The Maturity Model defines a basic set of services that allows organiza-
FIGURE 4.2 tions to communicate to stakeholders what they can expect for materials
Digital Preservation Maturity Model
managed within the organization’s repository or digital library. These levels
define the following activities.
Level 1. Safe Storage

The organization will provide bit-level storage with an agreed-
upon level of reassurance that the bits are protected against
simple storage failure.

Level 2. Storage Management
The organization will optimize the storage management to
ensure that the bits are moved to the most appropriate location.
Decisions related to bit location are done based on issues such
as storage durability, cost reduction, cloud versus local storage,
or performance.
Level 3. Storage Validation

The organization provides support for multiple object storage,
plus fixity checking to validate storage security. Object fixity is
checked on storage, at access, and at regular intervals to con-
firm that objects have not been changed due to bit rot or tam-
pering. If a failure is identified, the corrupted file is replaced by
an alternate good copy.

Level 4. Information Organization
The organization incorporates information hierarchy organi-
zation, descriptive data management, and simple processes for
the uploading, locating, and downloading of information.
Level 5. Information Processes
The organization will provide efficient and flexible business
processes to automate the activities associated with information

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