Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 15
Testing Claims About Digital Preservation
In this part of the topic we show a number of real examples of digital preservation
activities; these have been chosen to illustrate a number of scenarios and preser-
vation strategies using a great variety of types of data, from the simplest to highly
complex.
15.1 “Accelerated Lifetime” Testing of Digital Preservation
Techniques
In order to understand what and how claims about digital preservation should be
tested, we need to understand what things can change over time and what we might
expect to be able to rely on. Then we can simulate the passage of time, at an accel-
erated rate. Some of this duplicates, for convenience, some of the text from
Chap. 5
.
15.1.1 What Can Change?
We can consider some of the things can change over time and hence against which
an archive must safeguard the digitally encoded information.
15.1.1.1 Hardware and Software Changes
Use of many digital objects relies on specific software and hardware, for exam-
ple applications which run on specific versions of Microsoft Windows which in
turn runs on Intel processors. Experience shows that while it may be possible to
keep hardware and software available for some time after it has become obsolete,
it is not a practical proposition into the indefinite future, however there are sev-
eral projects and proposals which aim to emulate hardware systems and hence run
software systems.
