The UK's Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the Open Planets Foundation (OPF) are collaborating to encourage the UK's leading Higher Education (HE) institutions to take up a central role in European wide efforts to preserve digital heritage.
Recently announced at the iPres conference in Vienna, JISC will become a charter member of the OPF. JISC's role within the OPF will be to encourage participation amongst the UK's leading universities, unlocking the academic interest in R&D of digital preservation tools and technologies. JISC will also ensure that the wider HE sector can address the ever growing challenge of preserving digital materials more effectively.
Unlike parchment and paper, digital data is seen to have a life span of years not millennia. Current estimates suggest almost 3 billion euros worth of vital data is already being lost every year in the EU alone. JISC and the OPF will explore the best way of providing value and benefits to both the UK HE sector and the broader membership of the OPF. Both parties will establish an affiliate group membership for those academic and research institutions that are looking to address digital preservation challenges.
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