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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.

Based on a three‐level digital preservation framework, the purpose of this paper is to suggest a solution for long‐term digital preservation for the public administration sector, in the form of a centralised intermediate repository, on the basis of the concept of cloud computing.

By means of a thorough review of the literature in this area and an analysis of the current state of the art, the paper investigates a three‐level digital preservation framework with a focus on the public sector. It cross‐links this framework with the cloud computing concept, in order to propose an appropriate solution.

The mapping of six factors of digital preservation to three levels of digital preservation shows that using appropriate steps supported by suitable strategies and policies enables the public administration sector to take advantage of modern information technology and solve the demanding and critical problem of digital preservation.

The paper suggests an organisational and technological solution in the form of a centralised digital preservation repository within a cloud computing framework, to aid both organisations of the public sector which deal with active life cycle document phases and archives and libraries which deal with passive phases of documents and records.

The paper addresses the difficulties of digital preservation implementation in the public administration sector. The findings indicate that while developing and implementing digital preservation, the public administration sector should formulate common policies and solutions based on the suggested results of this paper and, in doing so, maximise the benefits of current technologies.

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.

Digital preservation is a term that is a bit of an enigma to many people both in and out of the digital arena, but it will undoubtedly be important in an increasingly all-digital world. The underlying work relating to digital preservation is essential to the long-term care of digital media, but who is charged with addressing this type of work, and can policy serve to structure and also reflect this complex concept? The main point of interest for this study is to examine existing digital preservation policies at Association of Research Libraries (ARL) institutions and analyze the content of the policies. The purpose will be to determine if these policies are able to provide a robust framework for true digital preservation work at this point in time. First, an introduction is made to provide the structure of the study and background. Next, a literature review is provided, followed by an outline of the methods and results of the study, and finally a conclusion with recommendations for future research.

An analysis of digital preservation policy at ARL institutions is conducted, with recommendations provided for further research.

This study was an attempt to highlight the current state of digital preservation policies, reviewing both the positive elements and the shortcomings of policies at ARL member institutions. The call for policies made for this study resulted in finding that 32 (26 per cent) ARL institutions currently have a digital preservation policy in place, from the institutions that responded (58 per cent response rate). In total, 23/40 institutions without a current policy indicate there is, or will be, work to complete a policy within the coming year (2016-2017). A call can be made at this time for more in-depth research and analysis of the policies for further inquiry. Both effective (University of Houston, University of Florida, York University) and ineffective (Colorado State University, University of Texas, Virginia Tech) digital preservation policies were discovered during the course of the study, with many policies falling somewhere in the middle. Many institutions provided a good template for digital preservation but lacked details for how this work would be addressed and who would be completing such work.

Limited to ARL member institutions at the time of the study (January 2016).

There is currently a gap in analysis and research of digital preservation policies. This is an area of active policy creation for many institutions, and it will likely be a growing area for researchers to examine.

The primary purpose of this paper was to assess the status of digital heritage preservation management in Eastern Africa. The following research objectives were addressed: investigate digital heritage preservation management in Eastern Africa, find out the content which is prioritized for digital preservation, describe the challenges of digital heritage preservation management in Eastern Africa and propose a framework to address challenges of digital heritage preservation in Eastern Africa.

This paper is based on a literature review and an analysis of national digitization efforts in Eastern Africa. The research objectives were addressed using Document Lifecycle and World Summit on Information Society Action Lines 2, 3 and 8 as the theoretical frames.

Results revealed growing awareness among institutions with statutory responsibility for heritage management about digital heritage preservation in Eastern Africa through the support of international agencies, civil societies and governments. However, institutions with responsibility for heritage management were ill-equipped to function in this role effectively. Content of academic, commercial, parliamentary and judicial and international treaties’ values were the preferred candidates for digitization. The findings revealed several challenges hampering digital heritage preservation management: weak policy and regulatory frameworks, limited capacity, inadequate government support and limited connectivity and bandwidth.

Many countries in Eastern Africa are making efforts to preserve their national heritage through digitalization to bridge the content divide between the region and the developed world so as to enhance access by its people, not only to their respective national heritages but also for international information systems knowledge. However, most of these efforts remain undocumented, making it difficult to make comparisons with similar best practices around the world.

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.

The aim of this paper was to explore digital preservation requirements within the wider National Geoscience Data Centre (NGDC) organisational framework in preparation for developing a preservation policy and integrating associated preservation workflows throughout the existing research data management processes. This case study is based on an MSc dissertation research undertaken at Northumbria University.

This mixed methods case study used quantitative and qualitative data to explore the preservation requirements and triangulation to strengthen the design validity. Corporate and the wider scientific priorities were identified through literature and a stakeholder survey. Organisational preparedness was investigated through staff interviews.

Stakeholders expect data to be reliable, reusable and available in preferred formats. To ensure digital continuity, the creation of high-quality metadata is critical, and data depositors need data management training to achieve this. Recommendations include completing a risk assessment, creating a digital asset register and a technology watch to mitigate against risks.

The main constraint in this study is the lack of generalisability of results. As the NGDC is a unique organisation, it may not be possible to generalise the organisational findings, although those relating to research data management may be transferrable.

This research examines the specific nature of geoscience data retention requirements and looks at existing NGDC procedures in terms of enhancing digital continuity, providing new knowledge on the preservation requirements for a number of national datasets.

The purpose of this paper is to examine digital preservation of e-government in Ghana under the research question: what are the current digital preservation strategies being deployed across the ministries and agencies in Ghana?

Guided by a conceptual framework, underpinned by a quantitative approach, the paper uses the survey approach, to address the digital preservation strategies deployed across public sector organisations in Ghana. It underscores the link between the conceptual framework and the literature to analyse the various digital preservation strategies.

Backup strategy, migration, metadata and trusted repositories were noted as the most widely implemented preservation strategies across the ministries and agencies. On the other hand, cloud computing, refreshing and emulation were the least implemented strategies used to address the digital preservation challenges.

The paper adds to the existing conceptual underpinnings that have dominated the debate about data management, archival storage, preservation strategies, challenges and best practices of digital preservation of e-government.

This study draws its originality from the evidence of studies on digital preservation in Ghana as most studies have rather focussed on the preservation of documentary heritage, preservation and security of microfilms, preservation practices in the public records (Akussah, 2002; Ampofo, 2009; Festus, 2010). The emergence of this study addresses the knowledge gap in the preservation of digital records in a country where little attention has been accorded to digital preservation. The study also feeds into Ghana’s vision 2020 and the information communication technology policy document of the ministry of communication which aims at ensuring that Ghanaians have access to information and communication technology products and services.

The World Wide Web has become an essential platform for a news publication, and it has become one of the primary sources of information dissemination in the past few years. Electronic media, i.e., television channels, magazines and newspapers, have started publishing news online. This online information is prompt to be disappeared because of short life-span and imperative to be archived for the long-term and future generations. This paper presents a content-based similarity measure based on the headings of the news articles for linking digital news stories published in various newspapers during the preservation process that helps to ensure future accessibility.

To evaluate the accuracy and assess the effectiveness and worth of the proposed measure for linking news articles in Digital News Story Archive (DNSA), we adopted both, system-centric and user-centric (human judgment) evaluation over different datasets of news articles.

The proposed similarity measure is evaluated using different sizes of datasets, and the results are compared by both user-centric technique, i.e., expert judgment and system-centric techniques, i.e., cosine similarity measure, extended Jaccard measure and common ratio measure for stories (CRMS). The comparison helps to get a broader impact and can be helpful for generalization of the measure for different categories of news articles. Multiple experiments have conducted the findings of which showed that the measure presented viable results for national and international news, while best results for linking sports news articles during preservation based on headings.

The DNSA preserves a huge number of news articles from multiple news sources and to link with a vast collection, which encourages to introduce an efficient linking mechanism with few terms to manipulate. The CRMS is modified to deal with the headings of news articles as a part of the digital news stories preservation framework and comprehensively analysed.

The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of the baseline study on the state of digital heritage material preservation in Botswana.

The study was part of a three‐country United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Digital Heritage Preservation Project on the state of digital material preservation in Africa involving Botswana, Ethiopia and South Africa. The study uses the survey method consisting of various components data collection strategies including field work, document research, observations and the holding of a national consultative seminar an additional data input tool. The field study involved visiting 26 institutions that were identified as having the actual or potential of managing heritage materials in the country. Two other categories of institutions that were surveyed included the service providers of digitisation systems in the country.

Findings revealed weak policy formulation on digitization both at the institutional and national levels; weak legislative framework for digital preservation; ill‐defined national digitisation co‐ordination for digitisation activities at institutional, national and regional levels; lack of awareness about the potential of digital preservation by national heritage institutions; a dearth of human resources for digitization; and lack of common standards on digital heritage materials preservation in Botswana.

Although the study was limited to institutions dealing with digital heritage materials preservation, the outcome of the study sheds more light on the challenges of preservation of digital materials in most of the institutions in Botswana.

The results of this study presents useful strategic policy options for the management and preservation of digital materials in Botswana and other countries of Africa facing a similar environment.

There is a dearth of literature on preservation of digital heritage materials in Africa, and this study provides useful insights that are unique and comparative experiences that exist on this subject.