Are you protecting your digital content?

Owned by Nancy McGovern (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Apr 29, 2024
3 min read

Overview: Digital preservation and other digital collections staff may be brought into or assigned responsibility for the development or extension of a disaster preparedness program to include digital content. If you have not yet, you will need to explicitly extend your disaster preparedness to include digital content. There are extensive resources and examples available for disaster planning for physical collections, but not as many yet for digital collections. The objective is not to produce a single document that is identified as a disaster plan, but to develop a set  of documents that cumulatively provide comprehensive documentation and are updated to reflect current practice.

The Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model and other digital preservation standards cite the need for disaster planning and response as part of a sustainable digital preservation program.

The Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model was by an international group that was convened by the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) on which the versions of ISO 14721 (2003, 2012, and pending 2024) are based. As specified in the document, the purpose of OAIS is to:

  • raise understanding, awareness, consensus about the concepts, roles, functions, and practice of digital archives and digital preservation;

  • enable effective participation by the community in engaging in the effective and long-term management of digital content;

  • describe and compare:

    • architectures and operations – to enable common development, e.g. share workflows

    • preservation strategies and techniques – to develop common practice and share tools

  • understand digital information data models – to develop a shared understanding of the states of digital content during the lifecycle at submission (SIP), for preservation (AIP), and for access (DIP), and to devise approaches to preserve specific content-types; and

  • guide growth of OAIS-related standards

OAIS includes a standards road map (section 1.5) that acknowledges the need for a family of OAIS standards that address submission methods (PAIMAS and PAIS), preservation metadata (PREMIS), certification (ISO 16363), and persistent identifiers (not yet a standard).

It is an opportunity for digital preservation to participate in disaster preparedness. Developing the roles and responsibilities document will your organization identify the range of responsibilities that need to be engaged in disaster planning to address the needs and requirements of the repository and its collections. 

These DPM Workshop model documents assist you in developing and maintaining that support and enable disaster planning and response, a core responsibility of Trusted Digital Repository (TDR). 

Each model document identifies the sections that should be included in the document with descriptions of the sections and examples. 

Note: these model documents are based on developing disaster planning as part of building the digital preservation program at ICPSR at the University of Michigan.

Question for your team/organization: How do TDL DP Services support your DP preparedness? TDL members contact TDL for more information and assistance. 

Source: Adapted from DP Disaster Preparedness developed by the Digital Preservation Management (DPM) Workshop: DP Management Tools. See the DPM Workshop website link for full provenance information about DPM’s DP Preparedness, alignment with the DPM’s Five Stages, examples, and related resources.

Related Resources:

This is a joint initiative between TDL Digital Preservation Services and the Digital Preservation Management (DPM) Workshop and Global Archivist LLC. Dr. Nance McGovern 2024.

CC BY-NC 4.0 Deed | Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International | Creative Commons

Â