Evolving Domains, Problems and Solutions for Long Term Digital Preservation

We present, compare and contrast new directions in long term digital preservation as covered by the four large European Community funded research projects that started in 2011. The new projects widen the domain of digital preservation from the traditional purview of memory institutions preserving documents to include scenarios such as health-care, data with direct commercial value, and webbased data. Some of these projects consider not only how to preserve the programs needed to interpret the data but also how to manage and preserve the related workflows. Considerations such as risk analysis and cost estimation are built into some of them, and more than one of these efforts is examining the use of cloud-based technologies. All projects look into programmatic solutions, while emphasizing different aspects such as data collection, scalability, reconfigurability, and full lifecycle management. These new directions will make digital preservation applicable to a wider domain of users and will give better tools to assist in the process.