International leaders holding a variety of interests and areas expertise have been named to a Blue Ribbon Task Force to develop actionable recommendations for the economic sustainability of, preservation of, and persistent access to, digital information. The Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access is co-chaired by Fran Berman, director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center at University of California, San Diego and a pioneer in data cyberinfrastructure; and Brian Lavoie, a research scientist and economist with OCLC, a library service and research organisation.
Using its members as a gateway, the Task Force will convene a broad set of international experts from the academic, public and private sectors who will participate in quarterly discussion panels. It will publish two substantial reports with its findings, including a final report in late 2009 that will include a set of actionable recommendations for digital preservation, taking into account a general economic framework to establish those objectives.
The Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation was launched by the National Science Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in partnership with the Library of Congress, the Joint Information Systems Committee of the United Kingdom, the Council on Library and Information Resources, and the National Archives and Records Administration. Their two-year mission is to develop a viable economic sustainability strategy to ensure that data will be available for further use, analysis and study.
Simply keeping pace with the rapid change in technology that has made things such as VCRs and cassette tapes curious antiquities in our own lifetimes is just one concern to be addressed by the task force. Establishing economically sustainable infrastructures and global standards to ensure that massive quantities of digital information are efficiently migrated to new mediums is also critical. Yet another challenge will be managing the storage of such vast amounts of data so that a wealth of scientific, educational and business information is not lost.
The first meeting of the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access will be held in Washington, D.C., January 29-30, 2008. The group will also establish a public web site to solicit comments and encourage dialogue on the issue of digital preservation.
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