title: Preserving our digital heritage - Weaving the web of trust: Presentation - iPRES 2005 - Göttingen
creators: Elisabeth Niggemann
abstract: Many digital objects have a lasting value and significance. As an important part of our cultural heritage they need to be collected and preserved for current and future generations of researchers. In the analogue world we have established criteria for selection, standardized technologies and well defined responsibilities for preservation. In the digital world, responsibilities, technology and selection have to be redefined and established. There is an urgent need to do this, because digital objects have a limited shelf life and the risk of loss is therefore imminent. This is especially true for the preservation of the great number of freely floating objects in the World Wide Web. But the mere storage of digital content is not even enough. A true preservation strategy also needs to ensure the long term accessibility to and usage of the stored objects. It is this combination of long term storage and long term usability that defines a "trusted digital repository".
  Developing the right technology and establishing the adequate organisational structure is not an easy task, but setting up criteria of selection might even be harder. We need answers to the question what documents researchers need today and what they will need tomorrow or in the far future. We need the right guidelines for selection or valuable resources will have disappeared tomorrow.
  Because of the high-speed, high-price, high-risk issues of digital preservation, it can only be addressed in a cooperative way. What is needed is a coordinated web of trusted digital repositories with preservation policies that guarantee long term archiving as much as long term usability.
keywords: göttingen