How are the EU projects tackling the issue of preservation?

The last strand mentioned in i2010 is preservation. The digitization effort made today should still be used in the future. It is a huge amount of work which should not be repeated to catch on the changes in technology. That is why long-term preservation is so important. It assures that resources will be readable and usable in future techniques.

Organisational challenges

PRETOPSPACE - Preservation towards storage and access. Standardised Practices for audio-visual contents in Europe (2004-2008) – It was set up as a research project focusing on preserving audiovisual material. It tackled such issues as transforming to the digital form and then preserving them for the future generations. It created the workflow for a Digital Audio Archive - you can find more on this topic here.

DPE - DigitalPreservationEurope (2006-2009) – It was created to raise the awareness of the preservation importance and promotion of best practices and standards for preservation. It reached its objectives by training packages and creation a common platform for discussion about preservation. Some of its outcomes are DRAMBORA Toolkit and PLATTER checklist and guidance.

Technical challenges

MEMORIAL - A digital document workbench for preservation of personal records in virtual memorials (2002-2004) – It was funded to research new methods for digitization of machine typed paper material with personal records. More precisely, it focused on enhancing methods of retrieving historic information from such documents in such a way that a virtual memorial could be easily created. Nazi camps documents were chosen as a test sample.

CONTRAPUNCTUS - Preservation and unification of new and existing Braille Music digital sources for a new access methodology (2006-2009) – The CONTRAPUNCTUS project aimed at using the technology to help visually impaired musicians by facilitating the use of different digital Braille music scores by software applications. One of its outcomes is the XML format which enables converting between different digital notation formats or a 'Resonare' software package for handling Braille music scores.

PLANETS - Preservation and Long-term Access to our Cultural and Scientific Heritage (2006-2010) – It was set up to create a keyturn software for facilitating preservation workflows, including planning, automatic methods for discovering digital objects significant properties, and the interoperability issue. The outcome should be easily installable and ready for use in the operational environment. You can find more on the produced software here.

Financial challenges

CASPAR - Cultural, Artistic and Scientific Knowledge Preservation, for Access and Retrieval (2006-2009) – It was funded to create a framework for preservation which applies the Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System, thus validating it. One of its main objectives was to lower the costs of preservation by building a base for preservation infrastructure. You can find more about CASPAR in the video below.

Notice

It is worth noticing, that CASPAR, DPE and PLANETS took part in creating a cartoon about digital preservation which familiarize hilariously everyday people with the importance of preservation.