“Digital Preservation: Setting the Course for a Decade of Change” , a conference keynote from 2007, available now on Slideshare is the ninth of 12 presentations I’ve selected to mark 20 years in Digital Preservation. The remainder will be published at monthly intervals over 2015. This presentation was the opening keynote to a conference in 2007 held by the Belgian Association of Documentation (BDA) to celebrate its 60th anniversary. It dates from my time at the British Library. The conference theme was "Europe facing the challenge of the long term conservation of digitalised archives". My keynote synthesised many of the topics I was focussing on at the time (and have featured in some of my earlier slide shares in this series) including encouraging University libraries to engage more actively with research data management in the sciences, to begin developing digital special collections of individuals, and to support international efforts to ensure continuing access and preservation of e-Journals as part of the scholarly record. In addition, given the European focus I briefly covered some of the major European initiatives in digital preservation at that time. I have selected this presentation as one of the 12 in this series, not only as it is synthesising these key themes but also because it includes some thoughts on whether digital preservation needed to be evolution or revolution (or a bit of both) for libraries and archives.

1. Digital Preservation:
Setting the Course for a Decade
of Change
Neil Beagrie
British Library
Keynote to Belgian Association of Documentation (BDA)
60th
Anniversary Conference
Bibliotheque royale de Belgique, Brussels
November 2007

2. Focus of this lecture
• Trends: past (paper)→ current (hybrid) →
future (more paper + much more digital)
• Licensed e-journals
• e-science / e-research
• e-special collections and personal archives
• European Initiatives
• Conclusions

3. Trends

4. Predicted Growth of Serials Publications
(after EPS for e-legal deposit)
0
2,000
4,000
6,000
8,000
10,000
12,000
14,000
16,0002001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
All serials
(print + e-)
Dual
form
e-only
serials

5. Computer Processing Power and Storage
0.0001
0.001
0.01
0.1
1
10
100
1000
10000
1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
$/MB

6. Growth of Scientific Data and Data Curation
• In next 5 years e-Science will produce more data than
has been collected in the whole of human history
• Data growth – Protein Data Bank (1972- 07/2005)

7. e-Journals
and preservation

8. Archiving E- Publications
• 2006 ARL/CLIR study E-Journal Archiving
Metes and Bounds: A Survey of the
Landscape available from
<http://www.clir.org/pubs/abstract/pub138abst.html>
• 2003/4 JISC e-journal archiving study by
Maggie Jones available from:
<http:// www. jisc. ac. uk/ index. cfm? name= project_epub_
archiving>

9. Issues Identified
• Few journals are solely in digital form at this
stage but parallel print/ e- access can only be
regarded either as interim or partial equivalents
• Perpetual access and archiving concerns
• What guarantees do libraries have when they
licence access to digital material they don’t own
(and it is served from outside national
boundaries)?
• Concerns about continued access following
termination of a licence are a major inhibiting
factor for libraries wishing to move to e- only
access

10. Emerging Services
• Publishers negotiating dark archives for their
back files (eg Elsevier)
• E-legal deposit laws in several countries and
national libraries establishing e-journal archiving
programs (eg BL, KB, DB);
• Third-party and consortial services (eg Portico,
LOCKSS,OCLC digital archive);
• Research Funders creating open-access
archives of funded research articles (eg NIH,
Wellcome Trust)

11. Principles?
I suggest we need to identify some core principles and
aims for funders/publishers/customers:
• Support diversity of solutions/services - why?
• State of knowledge and different approaches adopted: risks in single
preservation or business model approach
• Diversity of content included in different services: risks from gaps in
content coverage
• Support multi-node and multi-national instances
–why?
• not just backup/recovery – long-term geographical/political/cultural
risks need to be addressed
• Scholarly communication is international and intellectual
capital/content/publishing of e-journals is international
• Support professional “trusted” preservation
repositories and services

12. e-Research
and preservation
(UK Science and Innovation Investment
Framework 2004 – 2014)

13. Information Infrastructure
• 2.23 The growing UK research base must have ready
and efficient access to information of all kinds – such as
experimental data sets, journals, theses, conference
proceedings and patents….
• 2.24 It is clear that the research community needs
access to information mechanisms which: systematically
collect, preserve and make available digital information;
….
• 2.25 The Government [via DTI] will therefore work with
interested funders and stakeholders to consider the
national e-infrastructure (hardware, networks,
communications technology) necessary to deliver an
effective system.

14. Preservation & Curation WG
• There will be dramatic growth in digital research
data and publications over the next decade
• Requirement to transform information provision so
that UK researchers can benefit from the new
research opportunities it will create
• There are major challenges in the preservation and
curation of digital information
• Where disciplinary data centres and services exist
they represent approx 1.4-1.5% of total research
expenditure
• Outlined preservation components of infrastructure

15. Libraries, e-research, and preservation
Some issues to consider:
• Different staffing/support structures for
publications/data
• Disciplinary differences in e-research
• “80:20 rule” and implications for cataloguing
or digital preservation

16. Digital Special Collections
and preservation

17. British Library – Personal Archives
• Relevant (digital) special collections in BL:
– Literary papers and correspondence
– History of science
– Web-archiving (blogs)
– Oral history
• “Digital Lives” research theme
– Synergies between different projects and
collecting areas: inter-action with digital
preservation or access research

18. Literary letters
New York Times Essay 4 September 2005

19. Web-archiving - blogs

20. POLITICS: web-archiving

21. Digital Lives Research Project
• Partners: British Library, UCL(SLAIS), Bristol (IT and Law).
• Funded by Arts and Humanities Research Council from Sept 07-
March 09
• Website and blog www.bl.uk/digital-lives

22. Digital Lives: Preservation Challenges
• Digital memory over a human lifetime and
beyond for individuals
• Challenges-
– Software and hardware obsolescence
– Media life and data loss
– Ephemeral data eg web-pages, email
– Dispersal – multiple email/storage/publishing systems
– More pro-active preservation strategies needed
• Libraries need to engage in research for future
digital special collections

23. European Initiatives
• Libraries: e-depot (KB); Kopal (DB and
partners); DOM (British Library)
• Archives: PRONOM and Digital Archive (TNA);
Swiss National Archives; Dutch National Archive
• EU FP7 – PLANETS; CASPAR; Digital
Preservation Europe; Alliance Permanent
Access to Records of Science.
• Europe leading the world –currently ahead of US
and emerging economies? – but see iPRES
2008…

24. Conclusions

25. Evolution or Revolution?
• Evolution
– Print/Digital inter-dependencies – collective print storage and
digitisation
– Ongoing care of existing collections - lifecycle approaches to
collection care and digital preservation
• Revolution
– New digital preservation networks and services
• Professional networks eg Digital Preservation Coalition cross
professional boundaries linking archives/libraries/data centres
(national developments + international?)
• New types of service and organisations eg File Format Registries,
LOCKSS, PORTICO
– New (or more significance for) Digital Objects – e-journals, e-
research, e-special collections
– Acceleration of Scale and Automation for print and digital
– Reaching “tipping points” in print/digital mix over next decade

26. Future of Preservation
Digital will begin to dominate