NEWS RELEASE
For Immediate Release: August 15, 2002
Contact: Deanna Marcum 202-939-4758
Report Highlights International Approaches to Digital Preservation
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Leading experts from the United States, the Netherlands, and Australia describe current practices and challenges in digital preservation in a new publication from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The publication, entitled The State of Digital Preservation: An International Perspective, is a collection of papers presented at a symposium of the same name held April 2425, 2002. The symposium, which CLIR organized with funding from Documentation Abstracts, Inc. (DAI), was the first in a series of DAI Institutes for Information Science.
CLIR President Deanna B. Marcum introduces the volume, which includes the following papers:
- Kenneth Thibodeau, director of the Electronic Records Archives Program at the National Archives and Records Administration, provides an overview of technical approaches to digital preservation and the challenges ahead.
- Margaret Hedstrom, associate professor at the School of Information at the University of Michigan, provides a summary of the digital preservation research agenda, including an overview of current research needs and opportunities, potential frameworks for research, and recommendations for research programs.
- Meg Bellinger, vice president of OCLC Digital and Preservation Resources, reports on four aspects of OCLC's current work in digital preservation.
- Laura Campbell, associate librarian for strategic initiatives at the Library of Congress, provides an update on the congressionally mandated National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program.
- Titia van der Werf, former project manager in the Library Research and Development Department at the National Library of the Netherlands, describes her library's efforts to create a mass storage system and work with IBM on long-term preservation issues.
- Colin Webb, director of preservation services at the National Library of Australia, shares lessons learned from his library's work with numerous digital preservation initiatives.
- The final paper is contributed by Donald Waters, program officer for scholarly communication at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and coeditor of Preserving Digital Information: Report of the Task Force on Archiving of Digital Information, the landmark study issued by the Commission on Preservation and Access and Research Libraries Group in 1996. Addressing the challenge of creating economically sustainable digital archives, Waters focuses on the task of archiving scholarly e-journals and shares perspectives gained from experience with the Mellon Electronic Journal Archiving Program.
The State of Digital Preservation is available on CLIR's Web site at http://www.clir.org/pubs/abstract/pub107abst.html. Print copies will soon be available for ordering through the Web site.
The Council on Library and Information Resources is an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the management of information for research, teaching, and learning. CLIR works to expand access to information, however recorded and preserved, as a public good.
Documentation Abstracts, Inc. was formed in 1966 as a nonprofit organization comprising representatives from eight societies in the field of library and information science: American Chemical SocietyDivision of Chemical Information, American Library Association, American Society of Indexers, American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association of Information and Dissemination Centers, Association for Library and Information Science Education, Medical Library Association, and Special Libraries Association.
DAI was established to organize, evaluate, and disseminate information and knowledge concerning the various aspects of information science. It published Information Science Abstracts (ISA), a bimonthly abstracting and indexing publication covering the literature of information science worldwide. In June 1998, this periodical was acquired by Information Today, Inc., which continues its publication to date.
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