Key to our culture is that we can disseminate information, and then
maintain and access it over time. While we are rapidly advancing from
vulnerable physical solutions to superior, digital media, preserving and
using data over the long term involves complicated research challenges
and organization efforts.
Uwe Borghoff and his coauthors address the problem of storing, reading,
and using digital data for periods longer than 50 years. They briefly
describe several markup and document description languages like TIFF,
PDF, HTML, and XML, explain the most important techniques such as
migration and emulation, and present the OAIS (Open Archival Information
System) Reference Model. To complement this background information on
the technology issues the authors present the most relevant
international preservation projects, such as the Dublin Core Metadata
Initiative, and experiences from sample projects run by the Cornell
University Library and the National Library of the Netherlands. A rated
survey list of available systems and tools completes the book.
With this broad overview, the authors address librarians who preserve
our digital heritage, computer scientists who develop technologies that
access data, and information managers engaged with the social and
methodological requirements of long-term information access.
