Overview of Digital Preservation

Abstract

Digitization has provided opportunities for institutions to create digital surrogates for fragile and endangered artifacts, while providing greater access to cultural heritage materials. Libraries, archives, and museums are also increasingly active in preserving community materials that are “born” digital, including photographs, audio, video, and websites. <p> This five-part course reviewed best practices for the care of digital materials and featured case studies that illustrate the best, and worst, experiences of cultural heritage institutions in their efforts to prevent a digital dark age. It is a part of the Caring for Yesterday’s Treasures—Today series. In addition to webinar recording links below, you will also see transcripts of those recordings, resources that were compiled by the course instructors, and PowerPoint presentations. <p> Webinar 1: Overview of Digital Preservation Why is it important to preserve digital materials? What items should we be preserving and why? This session will provide a general introduction to the series and offer strategies to help you identify and select items from your collections for digitization and digital preservation.