Understanding Digital Preservation: Why It Matters and How to Do It Right
Preserving digital content is more than just storing files; it's about managing digital records from creation to disposal to ensure they remain accessible over time.
The Digital Preservation Coalition defines digital preservation as:
“Digital preservation refers to the series of managed activities necessary to ensure continued access to authentic digital materials beyond the limits of media failure or technological and organizational change, for as long as necessary.”
Digital preservation matters, especially for public institutions and regulated industries, because reliable records over time are essential for accountability and transparency. For example, Freedom of Information (FOI) requests are enshrined in law, and organizations often need digital preservation technology to comply.
This article explores the challenges and options for digital preservation.
The Challenges of Digital Preservation
While digital technology offers incredible capabilities, it also presents unique challenges for long-term preservation. One major issue is file format obsolescence where formats can become unreadable over time.
Simply storing or archiving files doesn't guarantee future readability, and digital records are vulnerable to data loss and corruption if not managed properly.
For example, municipalities often need to manage archives such as bylaw decisions going back decades, in addition to active records. They must know how to handle aging digital records to ensure they remain accessible and authentic when archived. Even organizations who pass records to provincial or state archives need to apply these standards, as some records, such as oil well documentation, may need to be preserved indefinitely due to long-term environmental impacts.
Additionally, there's an assumption that basic archiving or preservation tools such as a cloud platform, or storage methods like hard drives, floppy disks, or CDs are sufficient for long-term needs.
If you’ve been working with digital files for a while, you know that this is not a bulletproof approach, and endlessly storing copies of files can lead to compliance risks.
Preservica, a leading digital preservation technology provider for content in Microsoft 365, summarizes the challenges in this list:
Source: Preservica
A key challenge mentioned is the issue of bit rot, which refers to the gradual degradation of digital data stored on physical media over time. This occurs when individual bits—the smallest units of digital data—unexpectedly change from their intended state, either 0 or 1, to the opposite. Bit rot can compromise the integrity of the information, rendering it unreadable and inaccessible. Several factors contribute to this problem, such as aging storage devices, environmental conditions like temperature fluctuations, and manufacturing defects in the storage media. Even cloud-based storage solutions are vulnerable to bit rot, as they rely on physical media like hard disk drives and solid-state drives. Therefore, addressing this problem is essential for ensuring the long-term reliability of digital preservation efforts.
The decentralization of recordkeeping further complicates the situation, making it difficult to establish clear criteria for what content should be preserved.
What are the Options for Preserving Digital Content?
With the widespread use of Microsoft 365, preservation within this platform poses specific challenges. Traditional methods may not adequately address long-term preservation needs.
Gravity Union has partnered with Preservica to address digital preservation in the Microsoft 365 platform. Preservica is a leading provider of digital preservation tools who has built patent-pending technology to keep archives accessible over the long term.
Preservica’s Preserve365® product embeds active digital preservation directly into the Microsoft 365 and SharePoint experience. It’s installed as a plugin and users can then copy and move documents and folders from SharePoint to Preservica through an Archive action:
Image source: Preservica
The process can be automated with Power Automate integration.
Key capabilities of Preserve365® include:
Seamless preservation for Microsoft 365: Embedding digital preservation directly into the user experience.
Easy upload and preservation: Securely transferring records to the archive in just a few clicks within SharePoint.
Active Digital Preservation: Automatically maintaining records in the latest readable formats over decades, protecting them from file format obsolescence. It ensures records can always be read and trusted, automatically bringing legacy records back to life.
Ensuring security and integrity: The platform is ISO 27001 certified and uses Microsoft 365 permissions to secure access, maintaining the long-term security, availability, integrity, and privacy of data. It proves authenticity with checksums, audit trails, and full context metadata.
Behind the scenes files are saved as a package with metadata intact. Preserve365® transfers documents and folders to Preservica with SharePoint metadata, including technical, descriptive, and custom metadata fields. The metadata is transferred to Preservica as a JSON file.
Microsoft Purview retention labels can also be applied in Preservica. This is what a file looks like with a retention label from Purview matched to a retention policy in Preservica:
Image source: Preservica
Other Purview data classification information such as sensitivity labels can also be kept with the archive in Preservica.
Preserve365® can be used to streamline transfers of records from SharePoint to the archive, automate disposition actions, and empower users to self-serve archived records. It can also help optimize repository costs by moving inactive files.
In Summary
Digital preservation is a complex but vital necessity in the information age, particularly for ensuring accountability and preserving historical memory.
Preserve365® addresses the challenges of file format obsolescence and automates the records lifecycle, making it a robust solution for organizations seeking to manage long-term records effectively.
Learn more about Preserve365® and how it works with SharePoint in the data sheet:
If you have questions about digital preservation, or compliance in Microsoft 365 — reach out! We're happy to talk about your specific situation and discuss options.