What is Digital Preservation? Why is it Important?

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Written By Haisam Abdel Malak
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The need for digital preservation is growing at an exponential rate. The effort to preserve and preserve digital content is key to your business, but it’s hard to determine which solution you should use on your own.


Digital preservation is the practice of ensuring that digital information remains accessible and usable over time. This includes ensuring that digital files are kept safe from corruption and degradation and that any necessary migration to new file formats and media is carried out in a way that preserves the original information.

Digital preservation is important because it helps ensure that digital information and data will be available in the future. By preserving digital information, we can ensure that future generations will be able to access and use it.

This essential guide walks you through the process in easy-to-understand steps. It contains everything you need to know about the different options available and how they’ll benefit your company.

Introduction: How Does Digital Preservation Work?

Digital preservation is the process of preventing the loss of digital information. It is a process that involves taking steps to ensure that digital information can be accessed, used, and shared in the future while also meeting compliance requirements.

It can be achieved by taking a number of measures to ensure that data is stored securely and available for reference. This includes not only storing data on physical media but also storing it in an electronic format. The need for digital preservation has been growing as more and more people are using computers and other devices to store their work.

Digital assets include any kind of data that is created or created digitally, such as text, images, videos, audio files, software files, databases, etc.

Digital preservation is a difficult process that is fraught with challenges. Check out the article below for more info

The Top 10 Challenges of Digital Preservation (theecmconsultant.com)

How Digital Asset Preservation Has Changed Over Time

Digital asset preservation has changed over time. It is now possible to preserve documents and digital assets for long periods of time. This is because of the availability of archive software that can be used to back up and store digital assets in an organized manner. Technology has changed over time and there are now many different ways to preserve digital assets and make them accessible.

Archiving is the process of digitally preserving historical records, such as documents and digital assets. Digital archives are collections of digital assets that are organized in a way that can easily be retrieved and/or consulted. They typically contain an index of all assets, whether they were created by hand, with software, or both. Digital assets are able to be replicated across multiple mediums.

There are many different software solutions that have been developed to help people preserve their digital assets. These software solutions have made it easier for people to store, share and access their digital assets.

Archives software is one of the most popular options for storing, sharing, and accessing digital assets. Archives software is gaining popularity because it makes it easy for people to store, share and access their files in an organized manner.

The first archive software was created by IBM in the 1960s, it was called System R (System Reference Library) and it was designed to help the company’s researchers with their work. Archives software has evolved significantly since then, but the main goal remains the same – to preserve digital assets for future generations.

What Are The Types of Digital Preservation?

There are several types of digital preservation methods, and they differ in which they focus on preserving the data quality and longevity.

The most common ones include:

1- Physical digital preservation

The process of making original computer media such as magnetic disks or optical disks into permanent physical media such as compact discs (CDs), DVDs, or Blu-ray Discs.

2- Logical Digital Preservation

A process that emulates electronic data in its native form by storing it within a “digital surrogate”

3- Technology-based Digital Preservation

The preservation of recorded information using proprietary technologies including software tools and hardware devices that perform automatic data compression/decompression operations on

Why is Digital Preservation Important?

Digital preservation is a crucial process of preserving content for later use. With this, we can achieve what’s called long-term archiving. This means that if we back up our important data to digital storage and then store it in multiple locations, we can prevent losing or destroying data.

It can help us preserve data that would otherwise be lost to time. We cannot predict the future and take anything for granted, even our social media platforms. With all of the information that is being shared on these platforms, we must make sure that these digital assets are preserved and accessible for future generations.

As technology advances, digital assets can be lost forever. The first step to preserving them is to have a backup or backup system in place to ensure that difficult-to-find content will be saved in case of a data loss.

According to Pingdom, more than 86 percent of people believe that they need digital preservation software and only 6 percent are not too concerned about it. These statistics prove that it is becoming an increasing concern for organizations across industries and today’s new statistics highlight the need for a preservation strategy.

Companies need preservation solutions or else they risk losing irreplaceable data and having entire operations shut down. Preserving your data can be a challenge, which is why we need to keep up with advances in technology so that we can stay ahead of the game.

What Are the 3 Key Components for Creating a Secure and Sustainable Digital Legacy?

Our digital legacy is a combination of data and information that is stored digitally. There are three key components for creating a secure and sustainable digital legacy:

1. Data backup

As technology advances, organizations must prioritize data security as it is no longer a guarantee that digital data will always be safe. Backups are one way to ensure that your work is secure. Here are some tips for how to backup your data: save on a computer, online, or with an external hard drive.

2. Data storage location

Data storage locations are key concepts when it comes to digital archiving. By choosing a location that is both physically secure and easy for future generations to access, you can make sure your data won’t be lost or forgotten.

3. Data protection

With the amount of digital data we generate every day, it’s difficult to keep up with how to properly manage and preserve it. Preserving digital data allows you to retain access to it for the future.

What is the difference between digitization and digital preservation?

Digitization is the process of converting paper documents into electronic files for better storage, security, accessibility, and usability. While digital preservation is the act of storing digital data for as long as necessary. Before digitally preserving documents, they must be digitized.

What’s the Future of Digital Preservation?

As more and more people are storing their information digitally, the need for preserving information is becoming increasingly important. AI-powered storage is fast becoming the future of digital preservation.

The research company Gartner predicted that by 2020, 70% of data will be stored on devices with AI rather than in-house servers. This shift will require a new skill set for IT professionals, which can mean less overhead and more time to focus on new projects and innovation.

The use of AI could lead to an automated process that would enable a machine to automatically archive data just as humans do today. This would eliminate the need for human beings and make it possible for machines to archive our data with zero human intervention.

Conclusion: Start Using Digital Preservation Today to Protect Your Business Data

Most businesses today are not prepared for the future. They do not have a plan to protect their data in case of a disaster or an unexpected event.

The conclusion of this article is that you should start using digital preservation tools today to make sure that your business data remains accessible and intact even if something unexpected happens.

These tools can help you save your business data from being lost in case of a disaster or an expected event such as a natural disaster, cyber attack, or ransomware.

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