National Digital Preservation Initiatives: An Overview of Developments in Australia, France, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom, and of Related International Activity

Jitka Hurych (Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois, USA)

Collection Building

ISSN: 0160-4953

Article publication date: 1 September 2004

319

Keywords

Citation

Hurych, J. (2004), "National Digital Preservation Initiatives: An Overview of Developments in Australia, France, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom, and of Related International Activity", Collection Building, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 151-151. https://doi.org/10.1108/01604950410544719

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2004, Emerald Group Publishing Limited


Speaking about cooperation in the global world of information, the author says, “Our challenge is to respect those many boundaries and differences while sustaining practices and programs that will enable us to preserve contemporary digital expression for use by generations to come.” In consultation with the Library of Congress and the Council on Library and Information Resources, Beagrie identified national preservation programs of the four countries that were somewhat similar to the US National Digitization Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program created by the Library of Congress. Drawing on information collected from interviews and site visits, the author systematically describes each of the four countries programs, including: national context, national and institutional initiatives and projects, and international initiatives and future plans.

The author's report presents key findings and outlines major preservation developments in Australia, France, The Netherlands and the UK. The survey found that none of these countries had a single national initiative for preservation; rather, individual programs were scattered through several institutions, digital preservation was poorly funded, and the projects were usually short‐term. The author also concluded that it was often easier to obtain funding for access rather than for preservation. He also noticed a surprising lack of research in the area of digital preservation.

The report concludes with survey of multinational initiatives in electronic resource preservation, such as ERPANET, NEDLIB, OAIS and others. A list of references and Web sites consulted is attached. The report clearly demonstrates that digital preservation requires more than technology. It calls for national planning and international cooperation. Digital preservation will definitely affect the nature of the “information society” of the future, and international cooperation for the sake of future scholarship seems now more important than ever.

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