Experiences on Digital Preservation for Libraries and Archives: Two Case Studies in Colombia

Abstract

This article addresses the problem of preservation of digital documents by means of the study of two representative cases: The first referred to production of digital origin, the second to digitization from printed material, such as the production of digital books of the Fundación Editorial Universidad Católica Luis Amigó and the digitization of the vertical archive of the Gilberto Martínez Library of the Casa del Teatro, of Medellín. From there, a thematic analysis that allowed approaching some general guidelines to guide those interested in the preservation of digital documents of a textual nature was made. The practices carried out by these organizations are exposed and the learning that derives from these experiences is taken into account. Among them are: The importance that preservation is also assumed by those who produce digital content and not only by institutions dedicated to file management; integrate preservation in institutional planning; select the material according to the importance of the documents; the convenience of hiring services from specialized companies; generate preservation and distribution files; keep copies in different physical media and store them in spatially separate places. To preserve digital production, the individual user must resort to different storage systems, especially cloud services and various physical media.