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Panel moderated by Gunther Waibel, OCLC

Kristen Laise, Heritage Preservation – Kristen discussed the Heritage Health Index

• Institutions must give priority to providing safe conditions for their collection
• Every institution must develop an emergency plan
• Members of each institutions’ staff must be assigned to care for their collections

The findings of the Heritage Health Index showed that 31% of institutions placed a priority on saving digital collections, 32% reported damage to collections due to obsolescence, and almost half reported a need for digital preservation.

Steve Puglia, NARA – discussed the preservation of digital materials. Steve said that sub-zero storage prolonged the life of materials (for instance, The Bettman Archive, is currently stored in this way. Digital images of this collection are used for access). He argued for the creation of “persistent digital objects” which has enough information embedded with the object to describe it for future use by machines. He also said that with the obsolescence of other forms, digital reformatting is rapidly becoming the only viable option. Steve says that microfilm will soon vanish.

Jodi Hanel and Audrey Christensen, Exit Art – discussed their archive of contemporary experimental art. They’ve created an open access, searchable, cross-referenced database of Exit Art’s holdings.

Over lunch, I sat at a table with 10 others discussing Tools and Strategies for Digital Preservation, moderated by Helen Tibbo and Chris Erikson of UNC-CH SILS. My discussions were mainly with a colleague from BYU, comparing our digital projects.