It could happen to you: Thirty years of digital preservation in an ever-changing organization
Inge Hofsink
From the very start of digital preservation, KB National Library of the Netherlands (KBNL) has played a pioneering role in the digital preservation community. From the NEDLIB project in the 90s of the twentieth century, the worldwide first operational e-Depot in accordance with the OAIS standard in 2002, to important contributions to international research in digital preservation in the first years of the twenty-first century. KBNL shared its successes and knowledge with the digital preservation community by means of papers, professional visits and conferences. 
But at a certain point in time KBNL became a bit quiet, and remained quiet for a while. Until almost ten years later, when the organization brought renewed focus on its preservation activities. again on the world stage of the digital preservation community with the purchase of Rosetta and the achievement of CTS. 
But what happened in those quiet years, and more importantly, how did it happen, and most importantly, how do we prevent it from happening again?
In this paper, I share my personal reflections on the impact of organizational context on thirty years of digital preservation within KBNL, to unlock the past, present and future of digital preservation within our institution. In my opinion, it is of interest to know what the “embodied experience” is like from a practical point of view, and the personal perspective is important because preservation is more than just policy. Although sharing honest stories in public is, unfortunately, not usually an option, we think it’s important to be open to the community about our challenges, and things that have not gone as well as we liked, so we can all learn from those experiences and move forward together.

“Many times what we perceive as an error or failure is actually a gift. And eventually we find that lessons learned from that discouraging experience prove to be of great worth.”
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