GUIDELINES FOR THE SELECTION OF DIGITAL HERITAGE FOR LONG-TERM PRESERVATION: WHAT, WHY, WHEN

Abstract

I. INTRODUCTION The PERSIST Content Task Force under the Preservation Subcommittee of the UNESCO Memory of the World Program would like to offer a workshop to participants at the iPres conference to be held in October 2021, titled: “Guidelines for the Selection of Digital Heritage for Long-Term Preservation: What, why, when.” The Workshop would be based on the 2nd edition of the UNESCO Guidelines for the Selection of Digital Heritage for Long-term Preservation. This edition will be officially launched during the 2nd Memory of the World Global Policy Forum to be held in Paris on 21-22 September 2021. This one-hour workshop would be geared to an audience of practitioners of digital preservation. The workshop would introduce the Guidelines, elaborate on key points made in the Guidelines, and provide opportunity to exchange questions and answers. The workshop would be informal, allowing for active interchange among the workshop participants and the workshop leader. II. OBJECTIVE The workshop’s objective is to provide guidance and advice to participants about the appropriate digital resources that should be preserved by cultural and memory institutions for long-term access. III. BACKGROUND AND RELEVANCE The origin of these Guidelines was the very successful UNESCO Memory of the World conference held in 2012 in Vancouver Canada gathering over 600 global participants from cultural institutions, governments and the information industry to discuss digital information, its safekeeping, and continued access to these digital resources [link]. One of the conclusions of the conference was that there was a lack of information and guidance on what digital items should be kept for posterity, given the fact that the volume of digital information was almost incalculable. And since 2012, that number has multiplied many times over. Some selection of digital resources would be needed in order to keep the task manageable. Therefore, a Content Task Force, consisting of members from UNESCO, The International Council on Archives (ICA) and led by IFLA was created to develop guidelines to assist practitioners and decision makers in making informed decisions about what digital resources should/must be kept for long term access. The result was the publication “Guidelines for the selection of digital heritage for long-term access” which was launched in 2016 and widely used for training and advocacy purposes around the world. Five years is a long time in the digital ecosystem, and it was felt necessary to bring the Guidelines up to date, especially to add some of the newer forms of digital resources widely available. ICA, The International Council of Museums (ICOM) and IFLA representatives as well as other experts worked for the past 18 months, in a virtual way, to develop the second edition of the Guidelines. This publication will be officially launched in September 2021. Therefore, the timing is perfect to bring this publication to the attention of practitioners and decision makers dealing with the challenges of preserving digital information at this iPres conference. This workshop would fit under Sub-theme 4: Building the Capacity.

Details

Creators

Claire (The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions McGuire; Ingrid Parent

Institutions

IFLA); University of British Columbia / IFLA

Date

Keywords

content selection; digital preservation; libraries; archives; museums

Publication Type

paper

License

CC BY 4.0 International

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