Preservation

Digital Libraries depend on preservation of the digital materials they contain and the ability to build successful digital libraries depends upon methodological and technical solutions. Two years ago, an international workgroup brought together by DELOS and the National Science Foundation defined a research agenda for Digital Preservation and Archiving in broad terms. Beginning 2004 the DELOS Preservation Cluster will thus aim to:

• (inter-)connect people (researchers, stakeholders, suppliers, vendors etc.), organisations and projects that can deliver this research agenda;
• coordinate and promote research and projects;
• enable identification, collection, and dissemination of information, knowledge and expertise;
• provide mechanisms for developing testbeds and metrics for assessing the effectiveness of preservation strategies, and tools for evaluating digital preservation strategies;
• create a coherent platform for proactive cooperation, collaboration, exchange and dissemination of research results and experience in the preservation of digital objects;
• relate the research agenda more directly to the development of exploitable product opportunities and develop links with the industrial sectors;
• eliminate the duplication of effort between the various research activities by creating an integrating framework;
• and ensure that the work of the digital preservation cluster has a direct impact on digital library architecture and development work of other clusters in the DELOS network.

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