Digital preservation in practice: the e‐Depot at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek

Abstract

Digital publishing is causing publishers, research institutions and libraries to develop new policies, new business models and new infrastructures and techniques. A major problem is that, at the same rate at which our world is becoming digital, digital information is threatened. New types of hardware, computer applications and file formats supersede each other, making our recorded digital information inaccessible in the long‐term. The Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) has jointly with IBM developed a standard‐based deposit system (the e‐Depot) and signed archiving agreements with major science publishers for permanent preservation of their digital materials. This paper discusses the fully operational e‐Depot at the KB. It focuses on the data flow of processing the digital publications, and we address the issue of digital preservation in detail, by discussing the use of the universal virtual computer (UVC).