Page 74 - Building Digital Libraries

Preservation Planning

management. These include flexible workflows and the availabil-
ity of application programming interfaces (APIs) to enable in -
tegration with external tools and identify management systems.

Level 6. Information Preservation
The organization ensures that the repository system provides
functionality to ensure that information stored remains usable
and accessible to anyone who requests it. This includes provid-
ing strategies to ensure that content is readable for as long as it
is managed by the system.

By utilizing this model, which combines the principles of the Trusted Digital
Repository (TDR) checklist and the Open Archival Information System
(OAIS) reference model introduced in chapter 1, digital library managers
can evaluate their own systems and begin to determine the current capaci-
ties and the level of both minimal and optimal digital preservation activities
within the system. Once these have been determined, library managers can
begin to establish baselines for stakeholder versus internal content, as well
as outline supported preservation material types and their level of preserva-
tion versus ad hoc formats accepted into the repository infrastructure for
long-term bit-level management.

Preservation File Formats

It is important to note that file formats and the development of new file
formats is a dynamic and changing area of study. While formats handling
the preservation of digital imagery have changed very little over the past
decade, content types related to high-resolution audio and video are con-
stantly shifting as new container formats and new and better algorithms
are made available or placed into the public domain. As one considers
the Maturity Model, one important part of a digital preservation plan will
be the definition of digital formats that the system supports as “master”
preservation content. These “master” files represent the materials that an
organization will perform the highest level of digital preservation activities
upon, including, and up to, the migration to new encoding formats or the
emulation of rendering software, for a particular material type. For digital
repositories, this service level will define how the organization will actively
curate the content going into the future. And like anything related to digital
preservation, the evaluation of file format support should happen regularly
as new and better digital containers are developed to support the long-term
preservation and access mission of the organization and cultural heritage
community. 6

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