When evoking data preservation at the end of its active life, most organisations would think of mere archiving. But should there be more to it? A multidisciplinary team is suggesting a new ‘preservation by design’ approach, which would see dependencies between the digital object and its environment being be taken into account throughout the former’s life cycle.
The increasing digitalisation of content is a two-sided coin. Sure, it enables instant access to a dizzying amount of information. But this comes at a considerable cost: unlike books, digital content is mostly short-lived. The digital ecosystem evolves so fast – with changes in the likes of policies, legal frameworks, professional practices, user expectations and behaviour, or semantics – that long-term access to content cannot always be guaranteed.
Further details: A new approach to digital content preservation