World Digital Preservation Day

Today is World Digital Preservation Day and an opportunity to highlight the work undertaken by the National Library of Wales to ensure that digital content is preserved for the future. In order to raise general awareness of issues relating to enabling on-going access to digital content, which affect personal as well as organisational data, I would like to introduce you to Wilf.

Although Wilf is familiar with physical collections (having sat on a shelf watching archival cataloguing for many years) he has recently become interested in digital content and how it will be accessible in the future. To learn more about this, he went around the Library to film the digital preservation activities of the Library. The film is available to view here:

Following his tour around the Library, Wilf wanted to find out more about how he could make sure his digital content was preserved. He discovered that the Library had been given an award by the Preservation Coalition for its work Learning through doing: building digital preservation skills in Wales. The award was presented by the Dutch Digital Heritage Network as an acknowledgement of the value of the work in providing training and raising skills for staff across Wales. Through studying the resources which supported the programme, Wilf has developed new skills and can virus check content, identify file formats, check that data is not corrupted and create metadata. The resources to do these actions are available for all to view and use  on the Archives Wales website.

Wilf enjoyed his adventures in the Library but is now back on his usual shelf. He has gained the knowledge that digital content cannot be left sitting on a virtual shelf but that action must be taken for its preservation. If you want any help or advice about digital preservation, please contact gofyn@library.wales.

Sally McInnes, Head of Unique and Contemporary Content

This post is also available in: Welsh