"In library and archival science, digital preservation is a formal endeavor to ensure that digital information of continuing value remains accessible and usable."
Strategies for preserving and archiving oral history recordings like the use of appropriate equipment, digitization, and storage methods.
Basic concepts of Archiving and Preservation: This topic will discuss the fundamental principles, practices, and strategies of archiving and preservation, including the role of preservation in keeping archival materials.
Preservation of Oral Histories: Oral histories present a unique challenge in terms of preservation. In this topic, you'll learn about the best practices for preserving oral history, including recording techniques, file formats, and storage.
Copyright Law: Copyright law protects the rights of creators and owners of intellectual property. In archiving, it is essential to understand the legal protocols and limitations when using the work of others.
Digitization: As the world becomes more technology-driven, more digitized copies of resources are created every day. This topic investigates the process of digitizing and preserving oral histories, including issues related to storage and access.
Archival Research: Archival research is a critical part of oral history preservation, including finding and accessing historical records, analyzing their contents, and drawing conclusions based on thorough study of the materials.
Ethical Issues in Archiving and Preservation: This topic emphasizes the ethical considerations that must be made when collecting, preserving, and providing access to archival and historic resources, including sensitive, culturally significant, and private material.
Oral History Project Management: Successfully managing oral history projects require knowledge and skills related to project labors, funding, data collection, and preservation, including the establishment of the scope and objectives of the project.
Metadata and Cataloging: Metadata is information that describes and contextualized digital materials. This topic introduces metadata management and cataloging techniques, which are essential enabling effective access and retrieval of oral histories.
Disaster Preparedness and Recovery: Archiving materials are vulnerable to various threats, including physical damage from disasters such as floods, fires, and earthquakes. This topic explores how archives and preservationists prepare and respond to such events.
Appraisal and Collection Development: Appraising the value and significance of an archive and selecting materials for preservation is an essential step. This topic introduces methods for determining the value of different types of materials, including personal and historical records.
Future of Archiving and Preservation: This topic highlights future trends and innovative approaches to archiving and preservation, including emerging technologies, new methodologies, and the changing role of digital subscribers to access these archival and historic resources.
Audio Recording: Capturing audio interviews or speeches to be saved for future use and reference.
Video Recording: Capturing videos of individuals or events related to a specific time, place or culture.
Transcription: Converting audio, video or written material into written text to be analyzed or studied.
Digital Preservation: Preserving digital files in their original format and ensuring that they remain accessible into the future.
Metadata Management: Organizing information related to the archive, such as the names of the people interviewed, the date of the interview, or the location.
Storage: Securing physical or digital storage space for preserving archival material.
Access: Making archived materials available to researchers, historians, or the public for education and research.
Preservation of material culture: Preserving objects and artifacts that are historically and culturally significant.
Oral history projects: Conducted to capture the stories of individuals who have lived through significant historical events, cultural changes or lived experiences.
Preservation of cultural heritage: Preserving the culture and heritage of a community or society, such as music, dance, or traditional arts.
"It involves planning, resource allocation, and the application of preservation methods and technologies."
"It combines policies, strategies, and actions to ensure access to reformatted and 'born-digital' content."
"The goal of digital preservation is the accurate rendering of authenticated content over time."
"The Association for Library Collections and Technical Services Preservation and Reformatting Section of the American Library Association defined digital preservation as a combination of 'policies, strategies, and actions that ensure access to digital content over time.'"
"The need for digital preservation mainly arises because of the relatively short lifespan of digital media."
"Widely used hard drives can become unusable in a few years due to reasons such as damaged spindle motors, and flash memory can start to lose data around a year after its last use."
"Currently, 5D optical data storage has the potential to store digital data for thousands of years."
"Archival disc-based media is designed to last for 50 years."
"It is sold by just two Japanese companies, Sony and Panasonic."
"M-DISC is a DVD-based format that claims to retain data for 1,000 years."
"Writing to it requires special optical disc drives."
"Reading the data it contains requires increasingly uncommon optical disc drives."
"Data stored on LTO tapes require periodic migration, as older tapes cannot be read by newer LTO tape drives."
"RAID arrays could be used to protect against the failure of single hard drives."
"Care needs to be taken to not mix the drives of one array with those of another."
"Widely used hard drives can become unusable in a few years."
"Flash memory can start to lose data around a year after its last use."
"5D optical data storage has the potential to store digital data for thousands of years."
"Archival disc-based media is designed to last for 50 years."