Digital Stewardship Research Articles

Rethinking Personal Digital Archiving, Part 2

In this article I explore the implications of the four challenges presented in Part 1 – (1) accumulation, (2) distribution, (3) digital stewardship, and (4) long-term access – and discuss some promising technological directions and requirements for each. To address issues associated with accumulation, I examine the question of what we should keep and how we should designate and assess value of digital objects. Distribution raises the question of where we should put our digital belongings; here I propose the creation of a catalog of distributed stores. Digital stewardship raises the fundamental question of maintenance outside of the institution; in this case, I discuss a range of curation services and mechanisms. Finally, there is the question of how we will find these items we have stored long ago; I look at some new access modes that have begun to appear. I then wrap up the discussion by reflecting on what it means to lose some of our digital assets and how we might think of digital archiving technologies.

Defining digital stewardship in the digital age

The 2007 WebWise Conference on “Stewardship in the Digital Age” brought together over 40 speakers to explore the issues of preserving and accessing cultural heritage in digital form. The following article summarizes the conference presentations, prevailing themes, and challenges that remain, and suggests that digitization forces us to rethink assumptions about preservation and access in the context of cultural stewardship.

Vandals at the gates

PurposeThis paper aims to examine issues surrounding digital stewardship and information security with the digital library.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is exploratory in nature.FindingsThis paper highlights areas in which there needs to be awareness of information security issues in order to protect patrons and library resources.Practical implicationsInformation security is now everyone's business. Librarians who deal heavily in digital content must be active in their stewardship of digital library resources, both to preserve and protect potentially sensitive content, but also the privacy and confidentiality of the patrons.Originality/valueIt is hoped that everyone who has anything to do with the creation, maintenance, dissemination and preservation of digital content in the library context will take information security seriously. This paper is intended to be a primer for those who have not taken account of information security issues to begin doing so on an ongoing basis.