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The purpose of this paper is to understand the emergence of digital reformatting as a technique for preserving information within the cultural heritage preservation community by reviewing historical trends in modern preservation research.

This paper analyzes secondary sources, reviews and historical texts to identify trends in the intellectual and technological histories of preservation research, beginning with the first applications of the scientific method to combating book decay in the early nineteenth to the emergence of digitization techniques in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

This paper identifies five major historical periods in the development of preservation knowledge: the early experimental era; era of microfilm experimentation; era of professionalization; era of digital library research; and the era of digital reformatting and mass digitization; and identifies three major trends in its development: empirical inquiry, standardization and centralization.

Findings reflect broad trends in the field of preservation, primarily in a United States context and are limited to the modern era of preservation research.

This paper's broad historical overview provides a reference for preservation professionals and students in library science or archives programs. Identifying historical trends enables practitioners to critically examine their own preservation techniques and make better decisions when adopting and using new preservation technologies.

This paper provides a unique perspective on the history of preservation knowledge that synthesizes existing historical research in order to identify periods and trends that enable a clearer understanding of digital reformatting in its historical emergence.

The purpose of this study is to assess the digital preservation policies and plans for long-term digital preservation in selected repositories in South Africa, with a view to develop a digital preservation framework for the preservation of Indigenous knowledge system (IKS) in South Africa.

Through the multiple case study research design, data was obtained from eight respondents in four Indigenous Knowledge Systems Documentation Centers (IKSDCs) in institutions that are part of the National Recordal Systems (NRS) initiative across four provinces in South Africa using in-depth face-to-face interviews. Data collected was also supplemented with the content analysis of several policy documents in South Africa.

The findings reveal that there are no digital preservation policies in place in the institutions, especially long-term digital preservation for IKS. However, some of the institutions are formulating policies that will include the management of IKS collected in the institutions. This study also reveals that digital curation, policy formulation and disaster preparedness plans to some extent are measures said to be in place for the digital preservation of IKS.

This study focuses mainly on the NRS initiative in South Africa. Indigenous Knowledge (IK) related to traditional medicine, traditional plants and food are currently being digitized at the IKSDCs by IK recorders. This study will help in ensuring that the South African Government’s effort and investment in digitizing IKS and making them accessible online is not wasted. This study will help mitigate the risk of damage and alteration over time, either deliberately or in error.

This study fills a gap in the literature on the digitization and digital preservation of IKS from the context of the NRS project in South Africa. Very few studies have been carried out on the digital preservation of IKS in Africa. This study also proposed a framework for the digital preservation of IKS in South Africa.

Human resource capability is an important factor in determining institutional capacities in digital records preservation. This study aims to assess human resource capabilities in supporting digital records preservation in Tanzania, with special reference to the Records and Archives Management Department (RAMD) and Registration, Insolvency and Trusteeship Agency (RITA).

This study employed a descriptive case study design with multiple cases to generate insights into the topic under inquiry. Simple random and purposive sampling methods were used to select study respondents. Data were collected using questionnaires, interviews and documentary review. Qualitative data collected were subjected to content analysis, whereas quantitative data were analysed using international business machine-corporation-statistical packages and service solution.

RAMD and RITA have minimal human resource capabilities, as they contend with a shortage of qualified staff and technical personnel for digital records preservation. The shortage of funds, lack of management commitment to preserving digital records, lack of staff awareness on digital records preservation and inadequate participation of records practitioners in digital records preservation emerged as pressing challenges the two agencies contended with.

This study’s recommendations include finding alternative sources of funding, employing digital records specialists and provision of training on digital records preservation. Furthermore, this study proposes a framework that institutions can use in assessing human resource capabilities for digital records preservation.

This study contributes new knowledge and insights on the role of human resource capabilities in supporting digital records preservation in a resource-poor country.

This paper aims to explore a theoretical and methodological approach to preservation management in libraries, relying on the basic presumption that preservation is a complex and comprehensive process that involves many different and seemingly diverse aspects whose efficiency lies in preservation management.

Using a case study of Croatia, the paper describes a methodology for exploring the general preservation management context and presents a preservation management model that comprises five key components.

The paper offers insight into preservation management issues in a specific national context.

Although this paper focuses primarily on written heritage in libraries, it is applicable to other types of heritage and to other types of information institutions.

The theoretical and methodological approach presented in this paper and described in the example of Croatia can be useful for exploring similar issues in other countries. It can be expanded to other types and forms of heritage and heritage institutions.

The paper describes a model of organising preservation activities into an efficient and successful preservation system, and establishes a methodology for exploring diverse preservation issues on national and institutional levels.

This study aims to investigate the rate of print material deterioration at the Learning Resource Center – a university at the Mekong Delta and identify users’ behaviors that may harm library materials, thereby presenting some potential solutions to enhance librarianship students’ awareness of preservation.

The research is based on Walker’s (2003) conceptual framework of preservation and that of education and propaganda from awareness development. Using a quantitative approach, 25-item questionnaire was delivered to 133 sophomores and seniors and analyzed by SPSS software. Qualitative data from the open-ended question were recorded and analyzed by themes.

The findings from this study show that the rate of print material deterioration at the Learning Resource Center was relatively low compared to that of other libraries in the nation and in the world. In addition, students’ knowledge about how to make the photocopies, as well as how much to open the book, is limited. The most important reason is because of lack of education from school and the library. The research also proposed some effective and realizable solutions to enhance librarianship students’ awareness of preservation of the materials at Learning Resource Center of a Mekong Delta university, Vietnam.

This research provides library staff and users, especially librarianship students, with an awareness of the important role of book preservation, human behavior of library collections and potential preventive ways of book damage. This study also specifies evidence that library lecturers should include ethical issues in their lectures because librarianship students still have limited knowledge of book preservation. By doing so, these actions may motivate librarianship students to continue to learn and apply their knowledge of preservation into library materials and their own documents. Furthermore, the finding of the library work punishment contributes to better understanding of library labor force and students’ personality education. The findings can serve as a reference to educating other users in Vietnam and globally.

The level of print material deterioration at the Learning Resource Center of a Mekong Delta university, Vietnam and library work punishment were observed to be the most important findings with regard to library preservation in a particular library in Southeast Asian country. These findings provide insights into students’ awareness of preservation, not yet discussed in the literature.

The purpose of this study is to highlight the indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) preservation efforts in South Africa, with a focus on the National Recordal System and the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Documentation Centres (IKSDCs) across South Africa.

Anchored in the interpretivist paradigm, the qualitative research approach was adopted to explore the objectives of the study. The multiple case study method was considered appropriate and adopted for the study. The data for this study was collected through comprehensive face-to-face interviews and Web content analysis. The population of the study consisted of the staff at the IKSDCs in the selected academic institutions. The purposive sampling technique was used to select the following set of participants in each academic institution: IKS managers/coordinators, digitization officers and online collection administrators.

The findings provide an in-depth understanding of the IKS landscape in South Africa. The findings and recommendations of this paper would be useful to researchers who wish to know more about digitization efforts in South Africa. It would also be useful to all stakeholders and policymakers.

The paper brings to the fore the efforts of the South African government in preserving IKS through documentation and digitization. The paper highlights the sources of indigenous knowledge, types of indigenous knowledge captured, how the indigenous knowledge is ingested in the repositories and how the data is captured. Generally, the roles of the IKSDCs in the capture and preservation of IKS are highlighted.

The purpose of this paper is to identify, operationalise, and test a knowledge management model in the context of electroacoustic and mixed music preservation. This operationalisation intends to provide an interdisciplinary framework for the specification of meaningful usability for idiosyncratic technological artefacts build up during the creative process of these works.

The design of the questionnaire was based on semi‐structured interviews with seven composers. The resulting questionnaire was used for an online survey targeting composers registered at electroacoustic and mixed music online associations. Data were collected from 33 composers.

This article demonstrates the relevance of Boisot's knowledge management model in order to categorize the knowledge involved during the creative process of electroacoustic and mixed music with spatialisation.

In terms of Boisot's model operationalisation, the authors identified limitations with regards to composers' ability to discriminate between different levels of abstraction and diffusion. Since multiple agents, both human and non‐human, are involved in the creative process of electroacoustic and mixed music, further studies should address their interaction throughout the creative process.

Based on the findings of the survey, the authors propose the concept of significant knowledge as an extension of significant properties in order to provide a meaningful usability of digital objects. Since similar technologies are used in theatre, dance, and fine arts, the authors expect this research to benefit the artistic community at large in terms of preservation.

This study aims to assess the status of the digital records preservation practices in the South African public sector at the national department level. It set out to establish to what extent digital preservation policies have been implemented in South Africa’s public sector, to determine the related skills and competency of public sector staff, and to make any necessary recommendations of the basis of the results.

A content review of Southern Africa literature dealing with the preservation of digital records, its importance and related factors over the past 20 years was conducted.

The current state of preservation of South African digital records suggests serious consequences of existing knowledge and training gaps. Addressing those gaps may provide the knowledge needed to support new ways of working. Records management professionals in the South African public sector at the national department level are currently ill-equipped to adequately preserve digital records. This complicates the application of tools offered by the information and communication technologies that have resulted in increased creation of digital records.

The study was limited to only the public sector of South Africa.

The study makes practical implications concerning the policy framework for improving the state of digital preservation in South Africa so as to ensure long-term preservation of digital records. For instance, government departments are recommended to formulate and implement in-house policy frameworks, guidelines and plans that address digital preservation of records.

Sufficient funding and resource allocation ought to be provided to advance electronic records management programmes. In addition, the formulation of proper strategies needed to preserve digital records should incorporate technological tools and media software in the existing operations for the creation, capturing, appraising and preserving of digital records.

This study offers informed recommendations to address the challenges of preserving digital records in South Africa so that future losses may be avoided and allow readers to see changes over the 20-year period.

Preservation environments such as repositories need scalable and context-aware preservation planning and monitoring capabilities to ensure continued accessibility of content over time. This article identifies a number of gaps in the systems and mechanisms currently available and presents a new, innovative architecture for scalable decision-making and control in such environments.

The paper illustrates the state of the art in preservation planning and monitoring, highlights the key challenges faced by repositories to provide scalable decision-making and monitoring facilities, and presents the contributions of the SCAPE Planning and Watch suite to provide such capabilities.

The presented architecture makes preservation planning and monitoring context-aware through a semantic representation of key organizational factors, and integrates this with a business intelligence system that collects and reasons upon preservation-relevant information.

The architecture has been implemented in the SCAPE Planning and Watch suite. Integration with repositories and external information sources provide powerful preservation capabilities that can be freely integrated with virtually any repository.

The open nature of the software suite enables stewardship organizations to integrate the components with their own preservation environments and to contribute to the ongoing improvement of the systems.

The paper reports on innovative research and development to provide preservation capabilities. The results enable proactive, continuous preservation management through a context-aware planning and monitoring cycle integrated with operational systems.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the awareness about digital preservation and what must be done towards preserving valuable original digital material. The paper also aims to discuss the use of metadata principles and the implementation of tools for the preservation of documents stored on personal computers.

Data loss prevention starts with the creation of a digital object. However, methods to minimize the loss of digital data are often ignored, the use of metadata structures embedded in digital objects from the outset thereof are recommended as a starting point towards good preservation principles. The need to create awareness on the issue of digital preservation was promoted by the authors at various occasions during 2008, as the number of incidents of data loss and costs involved continue to be of concern to all involved. Whether the loss occurs by a malicious attempt, or an inadvertent mistake, it can be diminishing either personally or to the institute/company where it occurs. Data were collected through a digital questionnaire and literature studies were done on several strategies, policies and best practices. Personal visits to libraries actively working on digital preservation and curation formed a basis for conducting the study. The implementation of tools that can be used to preserve and retrieve digital content by individuals was also investigated.

Digital objects should be archived with metadata about the object and the creation thereof. Metadata need not necessarily be structured and controlled when used by individuals or small groups for preservation of self owned data. The metadata content, however, should describe the object, the method of creation and technologies used in the creation. All changes to the document should be captured in the preservation metadata. Future access to digital content does not only depend on one preservation method but on a sequence of strategies and methods applied to the digital content.

The paper provides a broad overview of certain aspects that must be considered when implementing digital preservation strategies. The value of metadata needs to be widely accepted and implemented and the use thereof promoted to creators of personal digital objects.