Digital Archiving Must Be Sustainable
Archiving work needs to be a sustainable practice. Even if no new items are being added to the archive, Digital Archives Require Maintenance, and because Digital Objects Degrade Faster Than Physical Objects this maintenance must be performed or the archive may be lost in a relatively short period of time.
- Create content with archiving in mind (with documentation, use file formats suitable for archiving, processes for regularly or automatically capturing content for archiving)
- Have plans for migration or export
- Expect the need to migrate file formats, operating systems, physical storage
- Ensure content can be exported to another system
- Minimize direct costs (or, consider costs as a proxy for time)
- Edward M. Corrado and Heather Moulaison Sandy. Digital Preservation for Libraries, Archives, & Museums. 2017.