Digital Collections: Management

This content is excerpted from Preventive Conservation: Collection Storage (2019), Elkin and Norris, eds.

Chapter 35: An Introduction to Digital Preservation

Sarah Slade, State Library Victoria, Victoria, Australia
David Pearson, National Library of Australia, Canberra, Australia
Steve Knight, National Library of New Zealand, Wellington City, New Zealand

This chapter provides conservators, collection managers and all those responsible for the care of collections with an overview of the concepts behind digital preservation. In the contemporary collection environment, many collections are born or made digital. Digital preservation is the active management of digital material over time to ensure its ongoing access. Much like the preservation of physical collections, digital preservation requires museums, galleries, archives, and libraries to assign responsibility and develop best practices for the management of digital material over time. To do this it is important to understand the preservation needs of digital material and where there are similarities and differences to the preservation of physical collections.