The Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access recently hosted a one day symposium called ‘A National Conversation on the Economic Sustainability of Digital Information.’ Convening a diverse group of speakers from the academic, private and public sectors, the event discussed a key issue of the Information Age - identifying practical solutions to the economic challenges of preserving today's deluge of digital data.
Speakers at the symposium called for libraries to play a considerable role in digital preservation. Task Force Co-Chair Brian Lavoie, research scientist, OCLC, provided an overview of the Blue Ribbon Task Force's Final Report on economically sustainable digital preservation practices, which was issued in late February. The report includes descriptions of the challenges in preserving scholarly discourse and the importance of stewardship organisations like libraries, archives and museums, in rallying stakeholders.
Speakers included representatives from the Executive Office of the President, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Smithsonian Museum, Nature Magazine, Google, and other organisations for whom digital information is fundamental for success.
According to one library leader, the task force's recommendations regarding the role of libraries in preserving scholarly discourse were too timid. The leader argued that, among other things, scholars should be required - not just encouraged - to grant preservation organisations like libraries non-exclusive rights to preserve their work. Leading off the discussion on scholarly discourse, Task Force Member Lee Dirks of Microsoft summarised five recommendations. According to Dirks, libraries, scholars and professional societies should develop selection criteria for emerging genres in scholarly discourse, and prototype preservation and access strategies. Publishers should partner with third-party archives or libraries to ensure long-term preservation.
Further, he said that libraries should create a mechanism to clarify their responsibilities to preserve monographs and emerging scholarly discourse, and sort out governance issues. Additionally, scholars should consider granting nonexclusive rights to publish and preserve; and all open-access strategies that assume the persistence of information over time must consider provisions for the funding of preservation.
Timo Hannay, director of web publishing at Nature Publishing Group, said that research organisations and national libraries are needed for preservation on a global scale. However, he recommended building in redundancy, a system where lots of different parties preserve for lots of different purposes. Hannay noted that preservation initiatives may rely on commercial players, in which the organisations that take responsibility aren’t the ones that create the infrastructure. According to him, research papers are increasingly using video and beginning to use interactive figures. This could pose more challenges for preservation, he noted.
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