Digital preservation

Digital information has become an important part of our cultural and scientific heritage: historical events, cultural achievements and in particular scholarly findings are increasingly only available in digital form.

This change brings many advantages and facilitates usage, but it also presents memory institutions with various challenges. Technical progress leads to rapid ageing of hard- and software environments, data carriers and file formats. It endangers the long-term usability of digital objects, including important resources for science and research.

Digital preservation aims to preserve digital objects for future generations.

The ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics meets these challenges in cooperation with the other two German National Libraries, the TIB - Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology University Library and the ZB MED - Information Centre for Life Sciences.

Since 2010, we have been operating a cooperative digital preservation system. We develop manual and automated workflows for the ingest of our digital holdings into the system and for the necessary adaptions of digital objects within the system.

Our growing experience and continuous exchange with experts in the field enables us to adapt our workflows ever more efficiently to our particular needs.

Cooperations in national and international networks are highly important to us. Thus the ZBW is an active member of the nestor network and the Open Preservation Foundation.

Certified Digital Preservation at the ZBW

In 2017, the ZBW received the German nestor-Siegel (certification based on the DIN 31644 norm).

In 2015, the ZBW received the Data Seal of Approval.

Transferring content into the digital archive

Generally, contents are transferred into the digital archive once processing of the digital objects, including metadata enrichment, is concluded.

For continually growing collections, such as the EconStor repository, dedicated software ensures that new content is transferred into the digital archive on the same day.
Image: EconStor ingest interface

The ZBW uses the Rosetta software for its digital preservation. By means of Rosetta and its integrated workflows, objects are transformed into an archive package, including all the metadata required for a sustainable usability of the object.
Image: package structures (source: TIB)