(Semi-)Automated digital preservation archives for small institutions and private users

Large heritage institutions have been addressing the demands posed by digital preservation needs for some time. In contrast small institutions and private users are less prepared to handle these challenges. An increasing quantity of digital collections is held by small institution with limited knowhow and awareness of digital preservation. Digital assets are becoming more important for an increasing number of institutions in the long run (e.g. legal obligation, intellectual property or business data). The limited resource in these institutions for archiving drives the need for new approaches of (fully or semi)-automated archiving systems. Research and development in the area of digital preservation is mainly done by memory institutions and large businesses. Consequently, the available tools, services and models are developed to meet the demands of professional environments. Automated archiving systems are needed for institutions with little professional know how in digital preservation. Important aspects are hiding the complexity of the processes, providing support for decision making and automated error handling. The automation of preservation workflows raises a number of research questions, e.g. metadata management, quality assurance and tolerable limit of loss of preservation actions and automated preservation planning. In this paper we will illustrate some research challenges in the field automated preservation. Current initiatives and research activities are indicated that are tackling aspects of the research topics.