Planets
The Planets Project (Preservation and Long-term Access through NETworked Services) was a four-year project which commenced in June 2006 designed to deliver a sustainable framework to enable long-term preservation of digital content, increasing Europe's ability to ensure access in perpetuity to its digital information. The project ended on 31 May 2010. Planets results are maintained and developed by a follow-on organisation called the Open Planets Foundation (OPF). OPF is a not-for-profit company, registered in the UK.
Partners: Lead partner: British Library. The National Library of the Netherlands, Austrian National Library, The Royal Library of Denmark, State and University Library, Denmark, The National Archives of the Netherlands, The National Archives of England, Wales and the United Kingdom, Swiss Federal Archives, University at Cologne, University of Freiburg, HATII at the University of Glasgow, Vienna University of Technology, Austrian Research Centers GmbH, IBM Netherlands, Microsoft Research Limited, Tessella Support Services Plc. Funding: co-funded by EU, FP7 IS&T
The Planets consortium estimates that EU member countries produce around 5 billion digital documents per year; of this total, around 2% (100 million documents per year) comprise information that is worth archiving. Around 2 million documents out of this sub-total are held in formats that constitute a long-term preservation risk. Taking into account the production costs of these documents - along with estimated worth of the information to others – experts at Planets have calculated that information conservatively valued at around 3 billion euros currently languishes in endangered formats.
The Planets project will enable organisations to improve decision-making about long-term preservation, ensure long-term access to their valued digital content and control the costs of preservation through increased automation and scaleable infrastructure.
For further information see the Planets website or contact info@planets-project.eu.
