The Digital Rosetta Stone: A Model for Maintaining Long-term Access to Static Digital Documents

Abstract

Due to the rapid evolution of technology, future digital systems may not be able to read and/or interpret the digital recordings made by older systems, even if those recordings are still in good condition. This paper addresses the problem of maintaining long-term access to digital documents and provides a methodology for overcoming access difficulties due to technological obsolescence. The result of this effort led to the creation of a model, which we call the Digital Rosetta Stone that provides a methodology for maintaining long-term access to digital documents. The underlying principle of the model is that knowledge preserved about different storage devices and file formats can be used to recover data from obsolete media and to reconstruct the digital documents. The Digital Rosetta Stone model describes three processes that are necessary for maintaining long-term access to digital documents in their native formats--knowledge preservation, data recovery, and document reconstruction.