Linking preservation metadata and collection management policies

Abstract

The long‐term preservation of digital resources is one of the most important issues facing the library community. In particular, libraries need a preservation strategy for digital objects, since digitization alone provides access but not preservation. The digital library community is also focusing on the problem of designing and implementing long‐term archives or repositories. Digital repository management includes the development and enforcement of policies for tasks such as managing access to collection contents and preserving items in the collection. Comprehensive standards and best practices are currently starting to emerge, and ongoing work has deepened the understanding of the needs and requirements that must be met to carry out effective digital preservation. One of these requirements is the creation and maintenance of metadata in support of the preservation process. This paper would like to share findings from earlier and ongoing work that serve as “groundwork” for the current directions leading to the idea of making metadata a more useful and powerful tool to contribute to the technical solution of digital preservation.