Internal activities

Before you can begin the digital preservation process, you need to assess your institutional readiness and prepare staff.

The following are some activities you can carry out to prepare your institution for digital preservation:

A. Inventory existing digital holdings and quantify their significant properties; maintain that inventory as the collection grows

  • Start with a simple list, identifying the number of objects (and their associated files), the file formats and their context (how it is used, is it a surrogate for access, are there alternate versions?).
  • Divide the objects into manageable groups based on their significant properties.
  • Investigate the kinds of management systems that would support the classes of objects that the institution holds.
  • Use the Digital Preservation Inventory Template for Museums, found in CHIN’s Digital Preservation Toolkit.

B. Institutional review

  • Assign at least one staff member clear responsibilities for overseeing digital preservation activities and mainstream digital preservation activities into the operations of the institution.
  • Assign a permanent staff member initial digital preservation responsibilities.
  • Identify units within the institution that may have digital preservation expertise or where certain tasks would logically reside.
  • Create a skills and required abilities matrix to identify opportunities for staff or unit development or where tasks could be outsourced.
  • Establish a long-term division of responsibilities including hiring staff where needed.
  • Consolidate and reduce the number of media types in the collection and create at least one additional copy for storage in an offsite location.

C. Establish a set of policy documents governing activities related to digital preservation within the institution

  • Create a policy using the provided checklist as a basis.
  • Present the policy to key stakeholders and make the policy easily accessible both publicly and as a part of the organization's key strategic documents.

D. Develop a timetable for evaluating holdings including integrity checks of the bit-level data, media refreshing and retention evaluation

  • Develop a timetable of preservation activities.
  • Follow it rigorously.

E. Review metadata standards that fit with the institution's community of practice and develop local implementation procedures or adopt an available usage guide to formalize the institutional approach to the usage of the standard

  • Review existing metadata standards with a view to setting a standard for your institution.
  • Develop a set of local recommendations for how to implement the standard; the local recommendations may be informed by existing usage guides.
  • In particular, identify the minimal metadata that is required for an object in the institution's collections.
  • Develop a training plan to ensure staff are trained to follow the chosen metadata standards.

Contact information for this web page

This resource was published by the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN). For comments or questions regarding this content, please contact CHIN directly. To find other online resources for museum professionals, visit the CHIN homepage or the Museology and conservation topic page on Canada.ca.

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