Open Planets Foundation – A community hub for digital preservation

Case studies

Integrating Planets and Fedora Commons The State and University Library, Denmark holds some of the oldest sound recordings in the world. The Library has a legal responsibility to preserve these media which need to be digitised as some of the originals are fragile, and in some case, no longer playable. The archive is a valuable and well-used source for research and education. The Library is implementing a new Digital Object Management System (DOMS), with Fedora Commons at its core, to replace over forty legacy repositories in its digital collection. This case study considers how the Library will first characterise and validate the wide variety of file formats, using Planets, so they can be permitted to be stored in DOMS for long-term preservation.

The National Archives of the Netherlands Use of Emulation The National Archives of the Netherlands is the largest public archives in the Netherlands and the custodian of the national record of Dutch Government. Increasingly, these records are digital, and are being housed in the National Archive’s custom-built e-Depot. Since 2002, the National Archives has carried out research into the feasibility of strategies to preserve different types of digital objects. This case study considers the appropriateness of emulation to preserve dynamic records such as spreadsheets and databases where migration is not a suitable option.

Royal Library of Denmark Use of Planets The Royal Library in Copenhagen is the National Library of Denmark. In 2008, it merged with the Danish Folklore Archives. As a result, the Royal Library has need to ingest a rapidly growing collection of materials from published works, manuscripts, documents and maps to pictures, photographs and music representing Danish folklore and that of other parts of the world. This case study examines how the two institutions have used Planets characterisation and planning tools to profile digital objects before transferring them to the Royal Library’s digital preservation store.

Preserving the British Library’s C19 newspaper collection with Planets: a short film In 2004, the British Library secured £2 million funding from JISC to digitise its fragile C19 newspaper collection and make it available online. The collection is one of the top ten in the world and is used by journalists, historians and researchers world-wide. Users such as Kate Summerscale, author of prize-winning novel: “The Suspicions of Mr Whicher.”

The British Library has digitised two million pages amounting to 80 terabytes of data. This film looks at the challenges the Library has faced to preserve the collection for the future and the decisions it has taken.

White papers

The Digital Divide The market survey was carried out to ascertain the status and requirements of long-term management of digital information by European organisations that create or hold digital content.

Over 200 responses were received from a wide range of organisations with respondents representing a variety of different fields. Overall, two-fifths were from libraries and one third from archives.

The results show that there is a widespread awareness of the need to take practical steps to preserve the rapidly increasing volumes of digital content; however, many organisations are still seeking the technical and practical solutions to support their preservation-specific activities.

An Emerging Market In June 2009, Planets carried out a series of 18 face-to-face and telephone interviews with some of the world’s leading IT companies. The interviews explored interviewees’ perceptions of the emerging market-place for digital preservation tools and services. Results confirm engagement is being led by memory institutions and driven primarily by legislation. Elsewhere, however, there is confusion over what digital preservation is and what it entails. Comprehensive policies and long-term budgets to cover preservation of digital collections are not yet the norm. Despite this, there are common expectations about what a digital library system should do; specifically in relation to the type of content it should be able to manage, scalability and the need to comply with international standards.