National coordinated service for the long term preservation and access of digital resources
The Digital Stacks project, in collaboration with the National Libraries of Florence and Rome and the Marciana National Library of Venice, has completed the first testing phase of the current prototype for a long term digital preservation system for electronic documents.
From January 2010 a further development of the project has started. Thanks to a specific funding from the General Direction for Library Heritage of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, the project intends to set up a system for the legal deposit of digital resources at national level.
To the purpose of extending the test-basis, the project will take into account the following main types of electronic resources:
- Legal deposit born digital resources, i.e. e-journals, and also Ph. D. digital thesis, resulting from specific agreements with universities
- Digital resources resulting from digitisation projects funded by the Italian Digital Library Initiative, mainly in the memory institutions range and only for master copies;
The proposed infrastructure is modular and can be include other types of digital resources.
It is widely acknowledged that long term preservation of digital resources is more than just a technical issue. Strategies to avoid bit loss or to prevent hardware and software dependencies are only a part of the issue. Digital Stacks of course have to deal with other problems, including economic implications (sustainability), selection problems (what is important to preserve for future generations), legal aspects, institutional roles and responsibilities.
The Digital Stacks project aims to set up a prototype of a trustable long term digital preservation system for electronic documents published in Italy and made public via digital communication network, according to the legal deposit law. The name of the project recalls the ‘stacks’ of the legal deposit libraries. As the former ones, the Digital Stacks aim to set up a public service of trusted digital repositories for the long term preservation of deposited digital resources through a scalable infrastructure (that can expand following the requirements and the available economic resources) and flexible (that can be used for the preservation of every type of digital resources). The Digital Stacks infrastructure is suitable not only for the library domain, but also for all the areas where long term access to digital resources must be ensured.
Long term digital preservation could be defined – in the field of the memory institutions - as a public service to be provided by trusted digital repositories. ‘Public service’ is a service that is considered essential and strategic by a designated community and which is accessible independently from the economic possibilities of the user.
The public service for the long term preservation of digital resources is aimed at guaranteeing for the deposited resources:
- viability: the quality of being readable from media. The bit sequences of each file are intact and readable.
- renderability: a digital object can be used in the way it was intended. A certain hardware and a certain software are capable of managing the stored digital resources, for example, by visualising a document in PDF format.
- authenticity: it is intended as documentation of identity and integrity. It should be possible to verify the creator of the object and establish that the object has not been changed in an inadvertent or unauthorized way.
- usability: availability for designated communities. The resource has metadata enough to ensure its retrieval and use in the long term.
Project Duration: since 2006
- Project creator and director: Giovanni Bergamin (Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze)
- Project coordination: Fondazione Rinascimento Digitale
- Consultancy for system certification: Ivano Greco (Firenze Tecnologia)
- Work Group:
- Fondazione Rinascimento Digitale (FRD)
- Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze (BNCF)
- Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma (BNCR)
The project is co-financed by the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze (BNCF) and by Fondazione Rinascimento Digitale.
