Digital Preservation
Practices that keep digital information accessible and understandable over time.
Digital preservation keeps information accessible, authentic, and understandable over time despite changing devices, software, formats, and organizations. It is more than making a backup: preserved material needs context, documented provenance, integrity checks, and a plan for future access.
Identify which files and records matter, who is responsible for them, what rights and privacy restrictions apply, and how long they must remain usable. Keep multiple managed copies, monitor fixity with checksums, retain descriptive and technical metadata, and document format migrations or other changes.
A backup can faithfully preserve corrupted, incomplete, or unauthorized data. Multiple copies in one account or location may share the same failure risk. Preservation choices also affect whose histories are retained and who can access them; involve relevant communities and review retention, consent, and deletion obligations.
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