Preserving Digital Records and the Life Cycle of Information

Abstract

Abstract In the Information Age, digital records are prevalent in every day life, from government, business, and education to banking, healthcare, and entertainment. While we have invested significant time and effort to create and capture information in the digital form, and are making great strides towards making digital information available in every community across the world, we do not have the ability to make this information available across generations of information technology, making it accessible with future technology and enabling people to determine whether it is authentic and reliable. This paper reports on the current status of digital preservation, an emerging field involving computer science, information technology, library science, and archival science. Digital preservation must be considered in a broader context, namely the life cycle of information. In the life cycle of information, we describe all essential factors for preserving digital records, including not only formats, structures, and types of digital records but also access software services, computing environments, even security keys and authenticity signatures and certificates of the records. Our finding is that preservation of digital records will be a major undertaking, but feasible solutions do exist.