Contents:
- Summary of Sabbatical Project
- Background
- Literature Review
- Survey Results
- Phone Interview Responses: Challenges, Funding, Staffing, Preservation Metadata, Digital Preservation Systems and Tools
- Collaborative Digital Preservation Efforts
- Digital Preservation Services
- Conclusions and next steps
- Works Cited
- Survey Results
- Digital Preservation Tools List
The author undertook a sabbatical to study the current state of digital preservation practices in a variety of academic libraries, cultural heritage institutions and archives. Her goal was to identify institutions with established digital preservation programs and investigate how these programs were implemented. She conducted a web-based survey about what digital preservation systems were being used, what services were offered to the campus or user community, staffing and organizational models to support digital preservation programs, as well as the costs associated with these various digital preservation programs. This was followed up with telephone interviews with 12 librarians and archivists.The author received a total of 148 responses to the survey, 100 of which were complete. Respondants come from across the globe but most are from the US and the UK. The short report (13 pages) starts with an overview of the problem as identified in a literature review followed by a summation of the survey results. This is followed by some example responses from the telephone interviews on the subject of challenges, funding, staffing, use of preservation metadata, the usability of systems and tools and the extent to which collaborative efforts are in place. After a section on how the author will carry on with the digital preservation challenge at her own institution, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the actual survey results are presented followed by a list of the Digital Preservation Tools identified during the survey.
This succinct report presents a snapshot of the digital preservation landscape at this moment and audiovisual collections are represented in the collections surveyed. The graphical presentation of the survey results make the outcomes clear and offer some interesting details. The results illustrate the great range of effort involved in digital preservation and a good overview of the actual systems, approaches and challenges the survey respondents face. It is interesting for those seeking a ’tech watch 2013′ on the running systems and tools being used at this time. It also provides a kind of “you are not alone” moral support to those trying to implement digital preservation services. It illustrates that many people, regardless of the type and size of institution, are actually facing the same difficulties and challenges.