How do you preserve digital assets and media for the long term, in a world where software is anything but?
Our most valuable digital files, significant academic and cultural records must be preserved for centuries, even millenia. But this is a tough call when the technology giants who dominate and define the industry can rise and fade in decades.
The only real answer is to develop open, resilient technology standards, and to ensure that standards, not software, are what define both our technology strategy and the assets themselves.
Neil Jefferies is Executive Director of the Open Preservation Foundation (OPF) and alongside his work for The University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries, he has helped to author and maintain some of the most significant standards for digital preservation and open scholarship, including the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) and the Oxford Common File Layout (OCFL).
In this episode of Epistemicast, Neil discusses the role of standards and how they can deliver much-needed digital stability for memory institutions. Alongside his specific insights into IIIF and OCFL, he explains what makes a standard dependable and successful and offers up some valuable advice for anyone tasked with preserving modern media.
Links
Oxford Common File Layout (OCFL): https://ocfl.io/
International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF): https://iiif.io/
Details of veraPDF and Jpylyzer (referenced by Neil during the podcast) can found alongside a host of other useful tools and standards on the OPF homepage: https://openpreservation.org/
Innosight (rebranded as Huron) 2021 Corporate Longevity Report https://www.huronconsultinggroup.com/en/insights/creative-destruction
Fedora Repository Platform https://fedorarepository.org/
Paper on Harvard’s use of OCFL https://www.cni.org/topics/ci/a-new-storage-paradigm-for-sustainable-digital-stewardship
