Part 1. Chosen Issue

Challenges of Digital Preservation

Challenges that faced by the libraries and archivists is the issue which I will be focus on. I could make an assumption that most of the people do not know that digital preservation will be that difficult. People would have thought that techniques on developing new technology grow in a rapid pace, in result the techniques and technology system on digital preservation would have happened at the same pace. In fact, it is the opposite way and digital preservation is still largely in experimental.

Challenge One: Being Able to Create Digital Contents Easier

Libraries and archives have served as the central institutional focus for preservation. Traditional materials are preserved in the form of paper, microform, photographic, and to a lesser degree audio-visual format. It took two centuries for the Library of Congress to acquire its 29 million books and 105 million other items: manuscripts, motion pictures, sound recordings, maps, print, and photographs.

Today it takes only 15 minutes for the world to produce and equal amount of information in digital form. With so many digital contents created every seconds and minutes, it brings the digital preservation to face with more different challenges.

Challenge Two: The Scale of Digital Content

Although computer storage is increasing in scale and its relative cost is decreasing constantly, the quantity of data and our ability to capture it with relative ease still matches or exceeds it in a number of areas. Some repositories still face significant challenges in developing and maintaining scaleable architectures and procedures to handle huge quantities of data generated from sources such as satellites or the web.

For example, the Library of Congress currently amassed 170 billion tweets between 2006 and 2010 totalling 133.2 terabytes and each Tweet is composed of 23 fields of metadata.

Challenge Three: Technologies for Mass Storage of Digital Information

The tow terms “mass storage” and “long term preservation” embody a contradiction in the current state of affairs of digital library development. New technologies for mass storage of digital information abound, yet the technologies and methods for long term preservation of the vast and growing store of digital information lag far behind.

Our ability to create, amass, and store digital materials far exceeds our current capacity to preserve even that small amount with continuing value.

Challenge Four: Digital Obsolescence

Unlike traditional analog objects such as books or photographs where the user has unmediated access to the content, a digital object always needs a software environment to render it. Physical storage media, data formats, hardware, and software all become obsolete over time, posing significant threats to the survival of the content.

“Digital materials are especially vulnerable to loss and destruction because they are stored on fragile magnetic and optical media that deteriorate rapidly and that can fail suddenly from exposure to heat, humidity, airborne contaminants, or faulty reading and writing devices.” (Hedstrom and Montgomery. 1998)

Although preservationists have been battling acid-based papers, thermo-fax, nitrate film, and other fragile media for decades, the threat posed by magnetic and optical media is qualitatively different.
These new recording media are vulnerable to deterioration and catastrophic loss. Making the time frame for decisions and actions to prevent loss a matter of years, not decades.

Challenge Five: Changes in Technology

“Unlike the situation that applies to books, digital archiving requires relatively frequent investments to overcome rapid obsolescence introduce by galloping technological change.” (Feeney. 1999)

Because digital material is machine dependent, it is not possible to access the information unless there is appropriate hardware and software. Rapidly changing technologies can hinder digital preservationists work and techniques due to outdated and antiquated machines or technology. This has become a common problem and one that is a constant worry for a digital archivist—how to prepare for the future.

A big problem faces by archivists in retrieval and playback technologies. Innovation in technology continues at a rapid pace. Recording and storing information are being replaced with new products and methods on a regular three to five years cycle.

Challenge Six: Absence of Established Standards

While preservation of traditional materials becomes more successful and systematic after libraries and archives integrated preservation into overall planning and resource allocation.

Digital preservation is constrained by the absence of established standards, protocols.

Digital preservation remains largely experimental and replete with the risks associated with untested methods. Digital preservation requirements have not been articulated from either the user perspective, nor have they been factored into the architecture, resource allocation, or planning for digital libraries.