On World Digital Preservation Day 2024, we honor the commitment and expertise of professionals worldwide who safeguard digital and physical records for future generations. This year, we celebrate by sharing insights from Somaya Langley and Kelly Spring, Co-Chairs of ICA’s Managing Digital and Physical Records Expert Group, as they discuss the key challenges, collaboration, and technology shaping digital preservation today.
Facing Today’s Digital Preservation Challenges
Digital preservation faces challenges beyond technical complexities. Somaya and Kelly explain,
Digital preservation challenges are often seen as predominantly technical, particularly where the digital content is complex. Yet current challenges memory organisations are facing are typically due to lack of funding for digital preservation activities, and limited time left to transfer content from legacy media carriers (such as floppy disks, optical media, tapes etc.) before they degrade.
Experts in audiovisual and digital preservation have warned about the ‘digital deluge’ and the ‘analogue avalanche’ for many years. Now organisations are confronting these challenges in parallel. Without the requisite budgets, resources and time, not everything deemed worthy of long-term preservation can be saved.
Enhancing Collaboration for Better Preservation Practices
Collaboration is essential to overcome these resource constraints. While it strengthens capabilities across the field, Somaya and Kelly emphasize the importance of having staff dedicated to digital preservation. As they note,
Collaboration is incredibly important when resources are limited. However, collaboration can only develop an individual, organisation or sector to a point. Organisations need staff who are focussed specifically on digital preservation, and staff who possess the necessary technical skills to undertake digital acquisition and preservation activities.
Centring knowledge-sharing provides a mechanism for individuals and organisations to learn from others about approaches and techniques used in digital preservation that have (and haven’t) worked. A good example is the Australasia Preserves Community of Practice.
The Role of Emerging Technologies
The increasing volume of digital content requires scalable solutions. Emerging technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), offer tools that can aid in this effort. Yet, Somaya and Kelly stress that these innovations must be approached thoughtfully:
Memory organisations are managing increasingly large amounts of digital content. This requires powerful tools to handle this data ‘at scale’. We may consider Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) as an ‘emerging technology’; we are simply witnessing new tools and capabilities – such as generative AI – entering the mainstream.
Demystifying AI and ML is critical, in order to be conscious of the environmental impact, through to algorithmic biases. Individuals must be empowered to ask inquiring questions of large-scale software and technology infrastructure suppliers. In addition, building skills to enable interrogation of the systems used to manage digital collections, is essential.
Inspiring Examples in Digital Preservation
One of the most inspiring digital preservation initiatives is a Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) event: Digital Preservationists Anonymous. Guided by Chatham House Rules, digital preservation practitioners gather to share experiences of challenges they’ve faced, and how they have resolved them. Memory organisations often avoid sharing problems or failures. This can be valuable information for others facing the same issue, or as a warning of something to be aware of. Transparently sharing challenges faced or experiences of where things have gone wrong, can help other individuals and organisations improve their stewardship of their digital collections.
On this World Digital Preservation Day, we celebrate the collective voice of professionals like Somaya and Kelly and the crucial role of digital preservation advocates. Through collaborative learning and thoughtful integration of new technologies, the field continues to advance, safeguarding our shared heritage for the future.
