Preservation Scenarios for Projects Producing Digital Resources

Dr Milena Dobreva, University of Malta

Large institutions in the cultural heritage sector integrate digital preservation into their everyday information management practice. However, there are multiple small projects which produce digital resources and the issue of their products’ sustainability is not always properly addressed. This instalment seeks to provide guidance to such projects. 

The instalment will present three case studies: a project developing a set of digital objects to be used by researchers and teachers in the Humanities; a project preparing material for inclusion into an established digital repository, and a project facilitating the collection and access to digital materials by multiple individual authors. These case studies will be analysed from the point of view of curation and preservation of the digital resources they are producing. 

Scenarios which address the digital preservation specifics in the three cases will help the readers to understand better how to take digital preservation related decisions in the case of their own projects. The risks in the three cases will be analysed and recommendations according to the specific situation will be given. 

This contribution to the DCC Digital Curation Manual will address the Sequential Actions (Conceptualise, Create ot Receive, Appraise and Select, Ingest, Preservation Action, Store, Access, Use and Reuse, Transform) of the DCC Curation Lifecycle Model.

It aims to provide practical guidance on curation and preservation-related issues to those who work on small-scale projects producing digital resources.

Download Preservation Scenarios instalment

Key Points

• Stakeholders' and users’ requirement analysis and their influence on the digital preservation solutions.
• Sustainability plans.
• Governance of projects and project outcomes.
• Project documentation.
• Choice of metadata according to the project specifics and preservation needs.
• Project workflows which address digital preservation.