Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 16
Tools for Countering the Threats to Digital
Preservation
We begin with a brief recap of the points made in Chap. 5 about the broad
threats to the preservation of our digitally encoded information. Then a number
of components, both infrastructure and domain dependent, are discussed and the
CASPAR implementations of these are introduced. Subsequent chapters build up
the details of the infrastructure and tools which indicate how these solutions could
be implemented and for which strong prototypes exist at the time of writing.
The major threats and their solutions are as follows:
Threat
Requirements for solution
Users may be unable to understand or use
the data e.g. the semantics, format,
processes or algorithms involved
Ability to create and maintain adequate
Representation Information
Non-maintainability of essential hardware,
software or support environment may make
the information inaccessible
Ability to share information about the
availability of hardware and software and
their replacements/substitutes
The chain of evidence may be lost and there
may be lack of certainty of provenance or
authenticity
Ability to bring together evidence from
diverse sources about the authenticity of a
digital object
Access and use restrictions may make it
difficult to reuse data, or alternatively may
not be respected in future
Ability to deal with digital rights correctly
in a changing and evolving environment.
Preservation-friendly rights or appropriate
transfer of rights is necessary
Loss of ability to identify the location of
data
An ID resolver system which is really
persistent
The current custodian of the data, whether
an organisation or project, may cease to
exist at some point in the future
Brokering of organisations to hold data and
the ability to package together the
information needed to transfer information
between organisations ready for long term
preservation
The ones we trust to look after the digital
holdings may let us down
Certification process so that one can have
confidence about whom to trust to preserve
data holdings over the long term
 
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