Digital Archives and Preservation

DEFINITION Preservation is the set of processes that maintain the authenticity, integrity, and chain of custody of records for long periods of time. Authenticity is defined as the management of provenance information about the creation of the record. Integrity is defined as the ability to create an authentic copy. Chain of custody tracks all processing done to the record, including migration to new storage systems or to new data encoding formats. Digital preservation addresses the challenge of technology evolution by managing preservation properties independently of the choice of software and hardware systems. Preservation properties include the names used to identify archivists, records, and storage systems, and the preservation metadata which includes provenance information and administrative information about record management. The display and manipulation of digital data is maintained through the use of representation information that describes how the record can be parsed and interpreted. Digital preservation environments implement trustworthiness assessment criteria, enabling verification that the preservation properties are maintained over time.