Editing Digital preservation (section)

{{Short description|Practice to keep digital assets accessible in long term}}
{{broader|Preservation (library and archival science)}}

In [[library science|library]] and [[archival science]], '''digital preservation''' is a formal process to ensure that digital information of continuing value remains accessible and usable in the long term.<ref>{{cite web |last=Digital Preservation Coalition |title=Introduction: Definitions and Concepts |url=http://www.dpconline.org/advice/preservationhandbook/introduction/definitions-and-concepts |work=Digital Preservation Handbook |year=2008 |publisher=York, UK |access-date=24 February 2012 |quote=Digital preservation refers to the series of managed activities necessary to ensure continued access to digital information for as long as necessary.|url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120401184900/http://www.dpconline.org/advice/preservationhandbook/introduction/definitions-and-concepts |archive-date=1 April 2012 }}</ref> It involves planning, resource allocation, and application of [[Preservation (library and archive)|preservation]] methods and [[Technology|technologies]],<ref name="Day, Michael 2006 pp. 177-199">Day, Michael. "The long-term preservation of Web content". Web archiving (Berlin: Springer, 2006), pp. 177-199. {{ISBN|3-540-23338-5}}.</ref> and combines policies, strategies and actions to ensure access to [[digital reformatting|reformatted]] and "[[born-digital]]" content, regardless of the challenges of media failure and technological change. The goal of digital preservation is the accurate rendering of authenticated content over time.<ref name="Evans 2008">Evans, Mark; Carter, Laura. (December 2008). The Challenges of Digital Preservation. Presentation at the Library of Parliament, Ottawa.</ref>

The Association for Library Collections and Technical Services Preservation and Reformatting Section of the [[American Library Association]] defined digital preservation as combination of "policies, strategies and actions that ensure access to digital content over time."<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.ala.org/alcts/resources/preserv/defdigpres0408|title=Definitions of Digital Preservation|last=American Library Association|date=2008-02-21|work=Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS)|access-date=2018-03-09|language=en}}</ref> According to the ''Harrod's Librarian Glossary'', digital preservation is the method of keeping digital material alive so that they remain usable as technological advances render original hardware and software specification obsolete.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Prytherch|first1=Ray|title=Harrod's librarians' glossary and reference book|date=2016|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-0-8153-9963-6|edition=Tenth|page=214}}</ref>

The necessity for digital preservation mainly arises because of the relatively short lifespan of digital media. Widely used [[hard drive]]s can become unusable in a few years due to a variety of reasons such as damaged spindle motors, and [[flash memory]] (found on [[SSD]]s, phones, [[USB flash drive]]s, and in memory cards such as SD, microSD, and [[Flash memory|CompactFlash]] cards) can start to lose data around a year after its last use, depending on its storage temperature and how much data has been written to it during its lifetime.{{Citation needed|date=March 2023}} Currently, [[Archival Disc|archival disc]]-based media is available, but it is only designed to last for 50 years and it is a proprietary format, sold by just two Japanese companies, Sony and Panasonic. [[M-DISC]] is a DVD-based format that claims to retain data for 1,000 years, but writing to it requires special optical disc drives and reading the data it contains requires increasingly uncommon [[optical disc drive]]s, in addition the company behind the format went bankrupt. Data stored on [[Linear Tape-Open|LTO]] tapes require periodic migration, as older tapes cannot be read by newer LTO tape drives. [[RAID]] arrays could be used to protect against failure of single hard drives, although care needs to be taken to not mix the drives of one array with those of another.