NDSA:Sources of Information about DP Standards and Best Practices

• JISC Standards Catalogue (http://standards.jisc.ac.uk/catalogue/Home.phtml)
• DCC DIFFUSE Standards Frameworks (http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/standards/diffuse)
  • can view standards by type, title, standards developing organization
• Report to ICABS on guidance for digital preservation (http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/nlasp/article/view/1214/1499 http://192.102.239.53/openpublish/index.php/nlasp/article/view/1214/1499)
  • A survey conducted by the National Library of Australia for ICABS on digital preservation. This survey focused on the availability of suitable guidance documents for preserving digital materials.
  • They classify "guidance documents" into the following categories:
    • Primary sources - resources written specifically to provide wide guidance(not just describing a specific technique), and with apparent broad community endorsement. Only one standard (for OAIS), a very few guidelines, and some training courses seemed to fit into this category;
    • Secondary sources - resources written to provide guidance, but considered likely to be dated or without apparent community endorsement;
    • Local sources - resources written to provide endorsed guidance for specific projects, programs or communities. In many cases, these situation-specific sources may provide useful guidance for a wider audience, but those intending to use them would need to carefully consider their applicability to their own circumstances;
    • Embedded sources - resources containing some useful preservation guidance within other information, such as reports on projects or articles debating issues, proposing approaches, or critically analysing experience. The great majority of literature on digital preservation, and most relevant conferences and seminars, may be best approached in this light: as sources of some potentially useful guidance requiring critical effort to extract it and decide what is useful.
    • Standards and tools – resources describing specific approaches or facilities. Except in a very few cases, most resources of this kind appeared to be marginal as guidance documents. Many relevant standards exist, especially in the area of file formats; there are also many partly developed tools such as format registries and metadata extraction software, which may play a key role in digital preservation. In terms of guidance, however, these resources are of themselves relatively less useful than guides to where, when and how best to use them in the context of managing collections.
    • Current awareness sources – resources that provide a convenient way of keeping up to date on recent developments and locating leads that may be worth following. A number of subject gateways, discussion lists, project “knowledge bases”, and conferences seem to fulfil this kind of role.
  • Areas where guidance is needed
    • Taking responsibility for archiving and preservation
    • Managing digital preservation programs
    • Creating preservable digital content and working with producers
    • Deciding what to preserve
    • Transferring digital objects to an archive
    • Naming, describing and controlling archived digital objects
    • Managing legal issues that impact on preservation
    • Protecting and storing the data of digital information resources
    • Maintaining the means of re-presenting archived objects for access
  • Types of digital materials to preserve
    • General - covering a wide range of materials
    • Archival records including email
    • Audio-visual materials - audio and moving image materials
    • Digital art and e-literature
    • Digital games, virtual reality and software
    • Digital “manuscripts”
    • Images
    • Miscellaneous digital materials
    • Online information and Web resources
    • Physical format digital materials
    • Scientific, statistical and research data
    • Spatial, geospatial and similar datasets
    • Current awareness resources

• Networking for digital preservation: Current Practice in 15 National Libraries (http://www.ifla.org/en/icads/documents-archive)
  • In 2004-2005, The National Library of the Netherlands (Koninklijke Bibliotheek) conducted for the IFLA-CDNL Alliance for Bibliographic Standards (ICABS) a survey on the use and development of standards in digital archiving within the international library world.