Walking a tightrope across the gap of digital preservation and environmental sustainability: The National Archives of the Netherlands and the challenge of achieving a climate-neutral digital archive
In response to the National Climate Agreement of the Netherlands, the National Archives
of the Netherlands (NANETH) needs to become more environmentally sustainable in
every part of the organisation. This includes the category IT & Data storage (and thus
the digital archive). How can NANETH responsibly reduce without sacrificing the
necessary digital sustainability? Taking the first step towards a green digital archive,
this paper describes several examples of more climate-friendly considerations in digital
preservation. Described cases tackle emulation versus migration as a method to preserve
access to digital objects, preservation tools for performing impact assessments, and
fixity checking to preserve the integrity of the digital objects, resulting in realistic
advice for NANETH. This paper is also intended to be an open appeal to the international
GLAM sector to be aware of the impact of the digital archive on the environment, and
that further research on minimising our digital footprint is highly required.