Preservation of Digital Material - Responses from 15 out of 16 directors canvassed, question 2ii

National Library of Australia

"Our policy is still to collect and keep the print format of publications for preservation purposes. This is because of the reasons outlined above but also for strategic and practical reasons. While print format publications come to us on legal deposit, it can be quite difficult to establish whether the information exists in digital form as well, and if it does to then acquire it. (If we are aware that the information is available in both formats, for some high priority categories such as government publications, we will acquire and keep both. However, the amount of information treated in this way is insignificant so far.)

Our policy is to provide public access to our collections, including those acquired for heritage and preservation purposes. Because our legal deposit legislation does not yet extend to publications in digital form, we must negotiate the right to acquire and provide access to information in digital form, on a case by case basis. We do not have to do this for print publications. So, in summary, it is still much easier and more effective for us to rely on the print version of publications for preservation reasons in order to ensure our documentary heritage is available for on-going public access.

(As an aside, with regard to other formats of Australian information, we are transferring our analogue audio collection to digital form and the digital copy will become the preservation copy in this case. This is largely due to necessity as analogue replay equipment is rapidly becoming obsolete. With pictures, we no longer create copies in the form of transparencies and negatives. Instead, they are digitised for access and reproduction purpose. However, the original is always retained.)"

National Library of Wales

"We do not yet see digital preservation as a satisfactory solution to the long-term storage of parallel media material. We therefore keep the print version if a choice exists".

Oxford University Library Services

"The print (hard copy) format is currently chosen as the preservation (archival) copy"

Cambridge University Library

"Print"

National Library of Scotland

"Both. Microfilm is also a crucial medium in current preservation practices".

Deutsche Bibliothek

"If we receive parallel formats of absolutely the same contents and functionality, we archive the format which is the most reliable according to the actual state-of-the-art of the technical development. If there is any doubt which format is the most reliable one, all formats are archived".

National Library of Canada

"Both"

Harvard University Library

"Print"

Library of Congress

"We are currently assessing this issue and have not made any policy decisions that specifically favor one format over another. Generally, it is our collecting policy to acquire content in formats that can be preserved. In future, and as methods for assuring the persistence of digital information advance, it is possible that when we are offered parallel versions of the same content that we may choose the digital version. In instances when we select the same content in parallel formats, other considerations (e.g., frequency of use, type of use, etc.) will inform the actions that we take over time to preserve content".

KB - Royal Library of the Netherlands

"See answer to first question" [ ie digital].

Yale University Library

"Always print. See above".

Bibliothèque Nationale de France

"From 2004, the BnF will experiment giving access in its Reading Rooms to the digitised version of part of the regional journals, the printed original version being only kept by the regional libraries".

Royal Library of Denmark

"So far we keep both formats, cf. above. But there are different situations according to different categories: 1. We seriously consider within two years to weed out second and third paper copies of journals of especially foreign provenance, when they are retrodigitized, e.g. in JSTOR. 2. With respect to current journals, which have appeared in both formats for a shorter period, to which we subscribe both in physical and digital format, we now try to negotiate within the license that we get a digital version of back issues, if we have to unsubscribe, and if we succeed we will take care of it as well as we can. 3. With respect to what we digitize ourselves we keep both the original and the digitized copy, even if the digitized copy does not have a quality that could constitute a preservation copy. We hope that we shall succeed in establishing agreements of the same scope, content and nature as the one between The Dutch Royal Library and Elsevier".

National Library of Norway

"As stated, we keep both. The life span of the material will be dramatically longer if you keep it under the climate conditions that are present in our storage vaults. (35% RH, 8 degrees Celsius, enough air-change, different filters). Actually: some material (magnetic tapes) have proven to be in better condition after 5 years of storage in the vaults than it was when we initially received it. The biggest challenge in the future will be the technical equipment needed to access the material. A lot of different formats, carriers and standards mean that we probably will experience huge difficulties some years from now. Already we keep material we believe will be more or less inaccessible in the future (2" video tapes)."

Royal Library of Sweden

"We try to keep both, but we are not there yet. The Swedish deposit law has not yet been revised for online publications and the Royal Library has not yet officially been given the task and resources by government to preserve these publications. Still, we are doing a lot in the fields of web preservation, collection of e-books etc but have had to prioritize. For e-books we are concentrating on those publishers, which are not publishing on paper as well. The Swedish web is downloaded about twice a year. Just recently we have started to download some web newspapers and journals more often."

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