Developing a Policy Framework for Digital Preservation

The Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS) has been established by the Joint Information Systems Committee of the UK's Higher Education Funding Councils to collect, preserve and promote re-use of digital resources which result from or support research and teaching in the arts and humanities. Within the UK, the Digital Archiving Working Group (DAWG) has been formed to co-ordinate research into digital archiving between its members: the British Library, the National Preservation Office, the Higher Education sector, the Public Record Office, the Research Libraries Group, and the Publishers Association. DAWG has commissioned a series of studies to examine issues raised in the CPA/RLG Task Force report on Digital Preservation. As part of this research programme the Executive of the AHDS has recently completed a study into developing a strategic policy framework and implementation guidance for the creation and preservation of digital resources. The framework is based on the life-cycle of a resource from its creation, management and preservation through to use, and examines the dependencies and issues at each stage, how these are interlinked, and the influence of the legal and business environment. The framework and the implementation guidance have been based on interviews with representatives of those organisations which have a major stake in the creation or long-term maintenance of digital research and on an extensive literature survey. Institutions interviewed included a selection of international libraries, museums, archives, scientific and other academic data archives. Together they represent a synthesis of work to date on digital preservation and point directions toward the development of robust preservation strategies. This paper presents a summary of the major findings and the policy framework from the study report.