Abstract

www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/dp Digital objects require appropriate measures for digital preservation to ensure that they can be accessed and used in the near and far future. While heritage institutions have been addressing the challenges posed by digital preservation needs for some time, private users and SOHOs (Small Office/Home Office) are less prepared to handle these challenges. Yet, both have increasing amounts of data that represent considerable value, be it office documents or family photographs. Backup, common practice of home users, avoids the physical loss of data, but it does not prevent the loss of the ability to render and use the data in the long term. Research and development in the area of digital preservation is driven by memory institutions and large businesses. The available tools, services and models are developed to meet the demands of these professional settings. This paper analyses the requirements and challenges of preservation solutions for private users and SOHOs. Based on the requirements and supported by available tools and services, we are designing and implementing a home archiving system to provide digital preservation solutions specifically for digital holdings in the small office and home environment. It hides the technical complexity of digital preservation challenges and provides simple and automated services based on established best practice examples. The system combines bitstream preservation and logical preservation strategies to avoid loss of data and the ability to access and use them. A first software prototype, called Hoppla, is presented in this paper.

Citations