Digital Preservation research

Digital preservation research news

Electronic records challenge our existing ideas about authenticity for a number of reasons, since digital information can easily be changed without leaving any obvious trace. An electronic record does not have a unique, concrete physical form which can be considered 'original'; multiple copies may exist simultaneously, each with equal validity.

We may need to transfer the record in order to preserve it, using techniques such as format migration.  This requires that we consider the logical record (which we wish to preserve) as being in some way distinct from its encoding in a particular format (which may change).  Archivists do not yet fully understand how to address these challenges.  The research into significant properties below is beginning to provide some of the answers, and we expect questions of authenticity to feature heavily in our future research programmes.

The key projects currently underway are:

In collaboration with the Centre for e-Research, we are developing innovative techniques to describe and measure the 'significant properties' of digital objects.  Understanding these properties is key to developing robust preservation techniques.

Understanding risk is also a key topic in digital preservation. Ultimately, the preservation activities we undertake are designed to mitigate the risks to our collection, and understanding those risks - how to identify, measure and overcome them - is therefore vital. For electronic records, one of the most fundamental risks is that technological change will prevent us from accessing those records in future, as the formats, software, operating systems and hardware on which they depend become obsolete. Although The National Archives has developed a risk assessment methodology for electronic records in its custody, we need to develop and refine our techniques for the future.