Long-term preservation of digital documents: Principles and practices

Abstract

Fundamental to human culture is our ability to disseminate information, and then maintain and access it over time. While technology is rapidly advancing from vulnerable physical solutions to superior, digital media, the challenge of preserving and using data over the long term will challenge our research and organization efforts. In this book, Uwe Borghoff and his coauthors address the problems of storing, reading, and using digital data for periods longer than 50 years. They offer concise descriptions of markup and document description languages like TIFF, PDF, HTML, and XML, explain important techniques such as migration and emulation, and present the OAIS (Open Archival Information System) Reference Model. The authors explore the most relevant international preservation projects, such as the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, and experiences from sample projects run by the Cornell University Library and the National Library of the Netherlands. A rated survey list of available systems and tools completes the book. Copyright © 2003 by dpunkt.verlag GmbH, Heidelberg, Germany.