Digital Preservation of Electronic Resources: Issues, Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

Digital preservation is a broad term used to describe the continued accessibility and maintenance of digital resources and safeguarding these for the foreseeable and the distant future. Digital preservation is a vital part of the creation and management of any digital collection. Without the appropriate preservation a digital collection can easily become inaccessible and therefore useless in just a matter of a few years.

A modern research library’s collection comprises of among other things, printed materials, online electronic resources, and locally developed digital library collections. Preservation of printed materials is not a big challenge for modern librarians but preserving and providing long-term access to digital collections is a thwarting process for librarians. Also, library users cannot take for granted the continued access to the online journals to which their libraries have subscriptions. This is because, libraries, for various reasons, can discontinue subscription to certain journal titles. Also, the publisher may discontinue any of the journals that they have been publishing. When such a situation arises, the library users will no longer be able to access the journals to which the library used to have subscription. To address such a situation, researchers at the Stanford University have developed a software tool called the LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe). This tool can help in facilitating preservation of bits and also provide continued access to such online resources.

This paper provides a brief overview of the main issues in digital preservation, highlighting current research and standard efforts. It also looks into the aspects involved in the digital preservation and discusses some of the techniques required for digital preservation. It gives a bird’s eye view of various projects initiated for archiving digital content of scholarly journals.