Series as the starting point. Unveiling the potential of series in digital preservation
Koen Dobbelaere
To tackle the challenges faced by the expanding digitization of the government, the document management cluster of The Agency for Facility Operations of the Flemish Government, uses the concept of series: “a grouping of the same kind of administrative information created or received by the same governing body within the same process”. Because of its characteristics a series can play an important role in the world of digital preservation.
A series is used to describe information and to provide the relevant context. Additionally, it is used to establish certain management rules on inventory and contextualization, acquisition and disposal, access and consultation, preservation and destruction. The biggest advantage gained from this concept, is that rules on appraisal are not imposed upon file or record level, but upon series level. As a result, information is already given an retention period and appraised at a high level.
This paper starts with an insight into what a series is and how it functions in the Series Register. The paper then elaborates on four different ways in which series can be implemented: in a digital repository, in SharePoint, in a folder structure and finally to raise awareness on preservation in the workplace.
approaches to preservation start 2 preserve