DCH-RP and PREFORMA: Two Case Studies on the Digital Preservation of Cultural Heritage

Abstract

The huge amount of digital cultural heritage data is growing every day thanks to the digitisation programmes carried out by cultural institutions. These data should continue to be available in the future to anyone who wishes or needs to access them. This is a very important challenge memory institutions have to face nowadays, and several questions need to be answered to this regard: How will we ensure the long-term preservation and access to our digital information? Who should select which digital data should be saved? How will we successfully store and migrate data as technology evolves? Understanding of digital preservation requires consideration of two main aspects: organisation and technology. Several projects have been funded in the last years to work on these topics by the European Commission. This paper presents the work that is being carried out in two of these projects: DCH-RP and PREFORMA.