Development of Organisational and Business Models for the Long-Term Preservation of Digital Objects

The number of digital objects (and digital collections) will increase rapidly within the next years since mass digitisation activities have started all over the world. Although it is obvious that these objects are of enormous scientific and cultural value, some crucial aspects of ensuring their long-term preservation and access to them have so far not been thoroughly addressed. This means that there is an urgent need for developing (and implementing) new and reliable models in order to deliver a sound organisational and financial framework for institutions (and enterprises), that are concerned with digitisation and long-term preservation of digital objects. To this purpose the Bavarian State Library (BSB) and the University of the Federal Armed Forces Munich, are carrying out a study, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), that explicitly addresses the perceived shortcomings by analysing the current state of long-term preservation in Germany, developing solutions in the form of scalable business and organisational models and clarifying the agenda for further research. Background/Motivation Today, the access to digital cultural heritage is a granted service of the traditional memory organisations. No longer only small projects on the digitisation of specific scientific and aesthetic values of the stocks of our organisations are realized. The focus is rapidly shifting away from pure boutique to mass digitisation projects with several thousands of titles. To secure the availability of this content for the long term is one of the priority tasks of memory organisations. Long-term preservation of the underlying data has been recognized as an absolute necessity, yet infrastructures can change, funds run dry. Therefore sustainable structures have to be created to ensure the preservation of our digital heritage in every case. Apart from reusable technical solutions, in particular stable organisational, legal and financial models have to be developed, which can be harmonised in a strategy for long-term preservation of digital content.