Practical Limits to the Scope of Digital Preservation

Practical Limits to the Scope of Digital Preservation

Archives

Mike Kastellec explores the technological and non-technological factors that impede a digital collection’s long-term sustainability. The technical issues, data loss and technical obsolescence affect all types of collecting institutions, including digital archives, libraries, and museums, and Kastellec argues such factors are continuously improved due to the intense focus devoted to their solution by most digital collecting institutions. However, the non-technological factors including access, selection policies, legal issues, and finances typically receive less attention and are, therefore, the greatest impediments to the collection’s sustainability. Kastellec identifies financial sustainability to be the ultimate limiting factor and explains that while the solution, creating redundant copies off-site, may currently be the best solution, the dynamics of all non-technological factors should receive greater focus and study for long-term preservation.

Kastellec, Mike

Information Technology & Libraries

2012

Polk, Victoria

Journal Article

http://ejournals.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/ital/article/view/2167/pdf

Kastellec, Mike. "Practical Limits to the Scope of Digital Preservation. Information Technology & Libraries 31, issue 2 (2012): 63-71. http://ejournals.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/ital/article/view/2167/pdf