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12.9 Recognising The Elements That Give Material Its Value: Echnical and Practical Issues

The document discusses several key points regarding digital preservation selection policies: 1) Selection policies should consider both the value of materials and the costs/difficulties of preservation, starting with easier to preserve materials while not refusing potentially valuable but hard to preserve materials. 2) Where certain materials cannot be preserved, selection policies should indicate this. 3) Policies should aim to preserve a sample of all types of digital materials, including ephemeral materials.

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Stephen Williams
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19 views

12.9 Recognising The Elements That Give Material Its Value: Echnical and Practical Issues

The document discusses several key points regarding digital preservation selection policies: 1) Selection policies should consider both the value of materials and the costs/difficulties of preservation, starting with easier to preserve materials while not refusing potentially valuable but hard to preserve materials. 2) Where certain materials cannot be preserved, selection policies should indicate this. 3) Policies should aim to preserve a sample of all types of digital materials, including ephemeral materials.

Uploaded by

Stephen Williams
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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of the organisation taking preservation responsibility

This value must be weighed against the likely costs and difficulties of preservation,
and the expected availability of resources. There is much to be said for starting with
material that can be saved easily. However, the future costs and capabilities of digital
preservation programmes are still unclear so it would probably be irresponsible to
refuse valuable material just because it may appear difficult to preserve
Where preservation programmes are unable to manage material they believe should be
chosen for preservation, they should to indicate this in their selection policies
It is desirable that the total effect of all collecting and preservation efforts will
preserve at least a sample of all kinds of digital materials, including samples of the
clearly ephemeral.

12.9 Recognising the elements that give material its value


Deciding to select an item, or a class of items, for preservation may not be enough:
Preservation involves maintaining the elements and characteristics that give the
material its value. The selection process should consider what those elements and
characteristics are
The process should document that reasons why the material was chosen so that
preservation managers can understand what they are required to maintain. (Some more
detailed notes are provided later in this chapter.)

12.10 A cautious approach


A decision not to preserve is usually a final one for digital materials. A cautious approach
would be to decide what materials definitely must be preserved and for how long; what
definitely does not need to be preserved; and what should be accepted for interim preservation
action while a more definitive selection decision can be made.

TECHNICAL AND PRACTICAL ISSUES


12.11 Assumptions about value
There are dangers in assuming that current value assessments are a completely reliable guide
to future values. For example, remote sensing data collected in previous decades has become
unexpectedly important for assessing environmental change. This experience suggests it is
probably better to err on the side of collecting more material rather than less, if the
preservation programme can manage it.

12.12 Documentation
Where digital materials can only be understood by reference to a set of rules such as a record
keeping system, database or data generation system, or other contextual information, selection
processes must identify the documentation that will also need to be preserved.

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