7 - Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research

Preservation of Digital Information
Joseph JVM., Soundararajan E., Jayakumar C. and Somasekharan M.
Abstract
The issue of digital preservation is of utmost importance in order to maintain our
mission of preserving a record of our culture. The exponential growth in the creation
and dissemination of digital objects by authors, corporate, academia, governments, and
libraries has emphasized the speed and ease of short-term dissemination with little
emphasis for the long-term preservation of digital information. Understanding the
issues and limitations that we face with respect to the preservation of digital
information will enable us to develop a plan for preservation action in our digitization
efforts. Digital information is inherently more fragile than traditional technologies such
as paper or microfilm. The fragility of digital storage media, combined with a high
degree of technology dependence, considerably shortens the "grace period" during
which preservation decisions can be deferred.
Keyword: Document Management; Data encapsulation; Metadata; Extensible Markup
Language (XML); long-term data storage; data migration; system emulation.
1. Introduction
Digital technology has numerous advantages and may help relieve the traditional conflict
between preservation and access. Separating usage from the original, digital technology
affords multiple, simultaneous uses from a single original in ways that are simply not
possible for materials stored in any other form. "Digital preservation refers to the various
methods of keeping digital materials alive into the future," according to a report from the
Council on Library and Information Resources [1]. Digital preservation is defined as ‘the
means of taking steps to ensure the longevity of electronic documents. It applies to
documents that are both “born digital” and stored on-line or to the products of analog-todigital
conversion (Bullock, 1999) [2]. Since technology is continuously evolving, this
technological component is constantly transforming on both software and hardware levels.
Because of these technological advances, the time frame in which we consider archiving
becomes much shorter. Complex digital records are increasingly difficult to deal with
because there are few universal standards for long-term preservation and access.
2. Need for Preservation/ conversion format
Rapid technological changes that require frequent upgrades of hardware and software.
Migration and conversion of records in different format may also be needed to protect the
information in records not yet eligible for disposal.
“Preservation formats will not last forever. They certainly will evolve as digital objects
evolve. Text documents which are today in most of the cases reducible to two-dimensional
images will in future no more be convertible in that way without unacceptable loss of
information. The choice of preservation formats has therefore a lot to do with medium and
long-term IT-planning. On the other hand it makes no sense to use a specific file format
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Scientific Information Resource Division, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research
Kalpakkam ; Email: joe@igcar.ernet.in
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