Page 77 - Building Digital Libraries

CHAPTER 4

are more and more looking to aggregations in the digital world to lever-
age the same kinds of economies of scale. It’s hard to know which of these
aggregated models will have the greatest longevity.

Summary

Of course, this has been just a shallow overview of the large digital preser-
vation landscape. While formats and models are important for developing
the initial preservation plans, understanding why preservation is important,
and understanding some of the inherent biases that have shaped many
cultural heritage organizations’ long-term preservation strategies should
be your next step. Over the course of writing this chapter, Trevor Owens,
the head of digital content management at the Library of Congress, posted
a preprint of a forthcoming book entitled The Theory and Craft of Digital
Preservation. In reviewing the preprint, it covers many of the issues noted
21
in this chapter in much greater depth, and provides a treatment of the his-
tory and craft of digital preservation that is nuanced and timely. If you find
yourself building or managing a digital library or repository, or you need to
learn more about digital preservation from a cultural heritage perspective
and want to go beyond the topics discussed in this chapter, Owens’s book
is highly recommended.

Notes

1. GIMP—GNU Image Manipulation Program, https://www.gimp.org/.
2. Dragon Espenschied et al., Exhibiting Digital Art via Emulation (Bern, Switz: ipres,
2016), www.ipres2016.ch/frontend/organizers/media/iPRES2016/_PDF/IPR16
.Proceedings_3_Web_Broschuere_Link.pdf.
3. Internet Archive Software Collection, https://archive.org/details/software.
4. Web Archiving Project, https://www.webarchive.org.uk/ukwa/.
5. Preservica, “Digital Preservation Maturity Model: White Paper,” 2014, http://
preservica.com/uploads/resources/Preservica-White-Paper-Maturity-Model-2014
_NEW.pdf.
6. Library of Congress, “Recommended Formats Statement,” www.loc.gov/preservation/
resources/rfs/.
7. Wikipedia, “TIFF Format,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIFF.
8. Wikipedia, “JPEG 2000,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_2000.
9. Wikipedia, “PNG File Format,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network
_Graphics.
10. Wikipedia, “BMP,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMP_file_format.
11. Wikipedia, “WAV File Format,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAV.
12. Wikipedia, “MP3 File Format,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3.
13. National Archives, https://www.archives.gov/preservation/products/products/aud-p1
.html.

62