LIBER 39TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE - Statsbiblioteket

PaRaLLEL sEssIons 1.1 to 4.1
29 JunE 2010
sEssIon 2.1
maRcEL Ras, hILdE van
WIJngaaRdEn (natIonaL LIBRaRy
of thE nEthERLands):
dIgItaL PREsERvatIon fRom nIchE
to coRE
In 2003 the first digital archiving system,
the e-Depot, of the National Library of
The Netherlands (KB) became operational.
This system was developed together
with IBM and at the time of implementation
it was the first long term preservation
system running globally. Today, seven
years later, the system has processed and
stored over 15 million digital objects,
mainly e-journal articles.
At the time the e-Depot was developed,
it was not common knowledge at all that
long-term preservation of digital publications
was a challenging issue. Although
the general public still does not realise the
risks, today, most library professionals
are aware of the vulnerability of digital
publications.
New soft- and hardware technologies
supersede each other with ever growing
speed, leaving older formats unreadable.
Research and development has focussed
on how to ensure permanent access
to digital objects and digital archiving
systems like the e-Depot have been implemented
at several libraries and archives.
At KB, seven years after the implementation
of the e-Depot system, we have
started projects to build a new system
with new requirements. Apart from the
fact that our contract with IBM runs out in
2012, several changes call for a new system
and a new approach. These changes
are not specific for KB, but are a general
development in libraries’ digital collection
management and are a consequence of
digital library developments. In short,
these changes are:
- scale: digital publishing, web archiving
and digitisation has lead to- enormous
growth of digital collections
- requirements for digital collection
management: while preservation was
first focussed on special parts of our
collections, with the growth of digital
collections, preservation has become a
core requirement of libraries collection
management
- progress in digital preservation R&D:
new tools have become available that
allow us to better process and manage
digital collections (e.g. Tools for identification,
characterisation, migration and
emulation)
- diversity of digital collections: digital
publications (including websites) have
become container formats with all types of
multimedia components embedded. These
formats are a challenge for permanent
access.
At KB, we have set requirements for a
next generation e-Depot that reflect these
changes. Our paper will present the
set-up of the new system, including new
policies for collection management that
will be developed.
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