Ambitions, goals and strategy for Digital Preservation [EN]

The primary document version in Norwegian can be found here.

The Legal Deposit Act of Publicly Available Documents (Legal Deposit Act)

§1 […] testaments of Norwegian culture and social life should be preserved and be available as source material for research and documentation.¹

Ambition for Digital Preservation

Ensure the protection of, and meaningful access to, national digital cultural heritage for current and future generations.

Goals for Digital Preservation

• Digital content for digital preservation shall be received using efficient and standardized machine solutions.
• Digital content shall be protected against unintended access, alteration, loss, or damage.
• The National Library shall at all times know what digital content is being preserved, its provenance, its condition, and what has been done to it.
• Digitally preserved content shall be accessible for dissemination now and in the future.

Challenges

• Integrity: It is easy to alter digital content, and it can be challenging to maintain and verify its integrity.
• Data Size and Volume: Increasing amounts of data challenge existing solutions for management, storage, and security of the digital collection.
• Technological Change: Risk that digital content becomes unusable or incomprehensible when software and hardware become outdated, and the diversity of file formats/variants of formats increases.
• Professional Competence: Lack of professional resources can limit the ability to carry out digital preservation.
• Changes in Usage Patterns: Unpredictability in terms of who will want access to and retrieve different parts of the preserved content and how it will be used.

Strategic areas of focus

• Developing expertise: Build expertise in digital preservation and have a good knowledge of current practices in the field. Actively contribute to national and international initiatives and share experiences.
• Standardization: Establish uniform, standardized, and automated handling of digital content and metadata.
• Technology: Further develop and ensure robust and scalable technological infrastructure that adheres to the principles² for managing digital content in a secure and sustainable manner. This includes both software, hardware, and other infrastructure.