The Digital Preservation Testbed is carrying out experiments according to pre-defined research questions to establish the best preservation approach or combination of approaches. The Testbed will be focusing its attention on three different digital preservation approaches - Migration; Emulation; and XML - evaluating the effectiveness of these approaches, their limitations, costs, risks, uses, and resource requirements.
Language
English; Dutch
Critical Arguements
CA "The main problem surrounding the preservation of authentic electronic records is that of technology obsolescence. As changes in technology continue to increase exponentially, the problem arises of what to do with records that were created using old and now obsolete hardware and software. Unless action is taken now, there is no guarantee that the current computing environment (and thus also records) will be accessible and readable by future computing environments."
Conclusions
RQ "The Testbed will be conducting research to discover if there is an inviolable way to associate metadata with records and to assess the limitations such an approach may incur. We are also working on the provision of a proposed set of preservation metadata that will contain information about the preservation approach taken and any specific authenticity requirements."
SOW
DC The Digital Preservation Testbed is part of the non-profit organisation ICTU. ICTU is the Dutch organisation for ICT and government. ICTU's goal is to contribute to the structural development of e-government. This will result in improving the work processes of government organisations, their service to the community and interaction with the citizens. Government institutions, such as Ministries, design the policies in the area of e-government, and ICTU translates these policies into projects. In many cases, more than one institution is involved in a single project. They are the principals in the projects and retain control concerning the focus of the project. In case of the Digital Preservation Testbed the principals are the Ministry of the Interior and the Dutch National Archives.
