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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.

This article examines the evolution of documents and its impacts from the following aspects: information density, longevity, uniqueness, duplicability, mobility, connectivity, and integration. It focuses on the consequences of the shift from printed media to digital media. By looking back on their evolution, we are able to see how the notions and functions of documents change over time, and the resulting impacts on individuals, organizations, and society.

Moving images represent a category of material which has historically received short shrift in most libraries and archives. Film, video, and now digital images form a significant part of many library and archival collections, however, and can be found in many formats and genres. Despite the ubiquity of such media in cultural institutions, the majority of libraries and archives owning collections of moving images have neglected these holdings—with the specific exception of those few archives devoted primarily to the care and preservation of moving images.

Digital preservation is currently a major concern for the information management, technological and scientific communities in all domains. It is also critical at the organisational level, with special pressure for all institutions with a responsibility for preservation, such as libraries and archives. This paper provides a brief overview of the main issues in digital preservation, highlighting current research and standards efforts.

To describe INFORM, a new methodology for investigating and measuring the risk factors of digital formats and providing guidelines for preservation action plans.

Construction of a model which aims to discover specific threats to preservation and measure their possible impact on preservation decisions. The methodology defines: risk categories of digital formats and their dependencies; risk factors for each category; scales to measure probability of occurrence and impact; and methods to collect, report and interpret the results.

While individuals are biased and subjective in their aversion to risk, collating the assessments of many individuals should generate group‐consensus or group‐averaged objective results. Hence, preservation plans can be based on objective analysis of risk trends instead of individuals’ opinions developed in the relative isolation of their institutions. The methodology takes into consideration individuals’ aversion to risk, therefore refraining from imposing specific courses of action, but simply making suggestions of possible actions.

A comprehensive approach to the format assessment must also consider, in addition to the risk factors, two other considerations, reflecting the quality of the digital format specification: significant properties of the format under consideration; the features of the format as defined in the format specification. These two aspects will be defined at a later time.

Digital archives, institutional repositories and digital libraries can take advantage of the measurements offered by the INFORM method to select digital formats most apt for long‐term viability. Moreover, by repeating the process, involved parties can detect changes in the threat model over time, to which digital collections managers can act accordingly.

Risk management has been previously used to detect the potential of loss of web resources and has been inspirational to this author. However, this method is the first to use risk factors to measure digital preservation viability of digital formats. The results of the measurements described here can be used by: content creators and publishers, to suggest best formats to use; content curators, to restrict what is collected; content managers, to know in advance how difficult to handle a certain collection may be; and preservation planners, to define and implement preservation plans, in the form of either, migration strategies or short‐term emulation solutions.

The greatest challenges with which digital systems present us are the creation and maintenance of reliable records and the preservation of their authenticity over time. It is vital for every organisation that its records be able to stand for the facts they are about i.e. that their content is trustworthy. To meet these challenges the international community of records professionals must develop appropriate strategies, procedures and standards. In this article the author explores the concepts and principles derived from archival diplomatics that should guide the management of electronic records and therefore these developments, as well as drawing conclusions about the nature of the research work required

The greatest challenges which digital systems present are the creation and maintenance of reliable records and the preservation of their authenticity over time. It is vital for every organisation that its records should be able to stand for the facts which they concern, i.e. that their content is trustworthy. To meet these challenges the international community of records professionals must develop appropriate strategies, procedures and standards. This paper seeks to explore the concepts and principles derived from archival diplomatics that should guide the management of electronic records and therefore these developments, as well as drawing conclusions about the nature of the research work required.

The paper looks at the problems presented by electronic records, considers a definition of electronic records, and discusses the authenticity and reliability of electronic records.

Research work needs to be carried out to formulate the principles that will guide the development of international, national and organisational policies, strategies and standards, the specific criteria for each type of policy, strategy and standard, and the procedural methods for their implementation. The most important thing is to ensure that the policies, strategies and standards are consistent with one another, and this is only possible when they are based on the same concepts and inspired by the same principles.

Concepts, laws and models from various fields must be studied to foster useful transfers from one field to another, to encourage the development of theory in emerging areas of endeavour and investigation, to eliminate the duplication of theoretical efforts in different fields, and to promote consistency of scientific knowledge. However, in order to develop the body of knowledge of records management, concepts, laws and models of archival diplomatics must be brought to bear.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which digital preservation facilitate the implementation of electronic government, open data and the right to information.

A case study research which chronicles the link between transparency and data availability. It makes use of a theoretical framework based on the open archival information system to analyse, explain, clarify and justify the application of open data, electronic government and the right to information.

The paper argued that e-government, open data and the RTI will remain elusive if a digital preservation infrastructure is not pursued. Within the context of e-government, the paper adumbrated that government agencies can incorporate e-government legislations into their digital preservation activities, precisely because the relationship between digital preservation and e-government have always been symbiotic. It alluded to the fact that an obligation will be placed on all public authorities and private agencies covered by the RTL law to create, keep and organise an effective and efficient system of record keeping, so as to give meaning to the right to information when citizens apply for information.

Future research should examine closely the implication of open data government within the context of digital preservation. Whilst digital preservation looks forward to the longevity of digital records and its accessibility, open data focusses on the utility of these records through online services, reuse and distribution for the purposes of transparency and citizens’ participation.

The application of digital preservation to open data in this paper appears to be more relevant at a time when most governments of the world are striving to obtain data to fight poverty, achieve universal primary education, fight HIV and foster maternal health. Its originality can further be established from the symbiotic relationship between digital preservation and electronic government, open data and the right to information.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the process of assessing the needs of a digital repository. The study’s institution – Kent State University, a large state university – is currently re-envisioning their digital library services to accommodate emerging technologies with an agile framework and platform. This paper includes discussion on the process of creating a sustainable digital initiatives program, a plan of action for migration, platform decision rationale and an overview of planning for future projects that is both flexible and extensible in nature.

The article’s approach is to examine the process of review and selection of the digital repository at Kent State University through the needs and requirements checklist the team devised according to the institution’s specifications. Literature published in the past five years is reviewed and applied to the selection process. The author maps out a plan that can be adaptable for growth and sustainability for a content management system.

Using models identified in the article, the team mapped a solution that can enhance the use and interaction by patrons to digital collections as well as provide a method to ensure the longevity of digital assets.

The article addresses issues that are inherent to digital content management systems of all shapes and sizes, and strives to provide a solution that would be relevant and applicable to many types of institutions in regard to digital repositories.

The purpose of the study is to investigate the digital preservation practices in institutional repositories (IRs) in Africa.

Data were collected from the IRs developed in university libraries in Africa, and it was done in two phases. The phases are website investigation to identify the university libraries in Africa that have developed IR and online questionnaire.

Results from the study showed that the majority of IRs in Africa used DSpace software to manage their digital contents, and more than half of the IRs engage in information migration. The study also revealed that the majority of the responding institutions provide long-term digital preservation in their IR. Interestingly, the majority of the IRs has developed digital preservation policy to guide the implementation of digital preservation for IR contents. Finally, the majority of the respondents indicated that they do not have long-term funding and lack the necessary technical staff with required skills to handle and manage the IR.

Because of language barriers, data were collected from only universities in English speaking countries in Africa.

The findings of this study will make librarians in universities in Africa and other developing countries understand the key issues relating to digital preservation and longevity.

The findings of this study will inform information professionals, librarians in developing countries that are planning to create IRs and provide long-term digital preservation of electronic resources in their institution.