March Workshop at NIST to Focus on Preserving Our Digital Data

© ilker canikligil / courtesy Shutterstock

Experts on digital
preservation are gathering at a workshop at the National Institute of
Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Md., from March 29 to
31 to develop a standards roadmap on preserving the vast and growing
amount of digital data over the long term.

“A digital preservation interoperability framework,”
explained NIST computer scientist and workshop program chair Wo Chang,
“is essential for effective and reliable access to preserved digital
content between preservation repositories.

The amount of digital data and content is huge and
expanding rapidly. The data range from digitized historical maps,
medical images, scientific modeling and simulations, national records,
financial transactions, health records, personal photos and videos to
blogs and email. A recent study by the International Data Corp.
estimates that by 2011 there will be 1,610 exabytes (an exabyte is 10¹⁸
bytes) of digital information. (For scale, Michael Lesk of the Rutgers
University Department of Library and Information Science has estimated
that the holdings of the entire Library of Congress, if digitized, would
amount to about three petabytes (10¹⁵)*.)

Observing that “science in the 21st century will be
conducted in a fully digital world,” the National Science and Technology
Council’s Interagency Working Group on Digital Data identified digital
data preservation and access as a key strategic issue in its recent
report, “Harnessing
the Power of Digital Data for Science and Society.”**

Attendees at the “U.S. Workshop on Roadmap for Digital
Preservation Interoperability Framework” will identify requirements,
technologies and best practices for digital preservation standardization
to establish a national roadmap. The roadmap will be used to develop a
digital preservation standard so that users and systems can access
digital content even when preserved on varied equipment by different
digital preservation repositories.

Workshop attendees are expected to come from
organizations handling preservation operations, strategies and
requirements; technology developers that provide preservation approaches
and solutions; and standards bodies establishing preservation best
practices in metadata, file format, packaging, management and
protection.

NIST is co-sponsoring the workshop with the U.S.
InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) Ad
Hoc Committee on Digital Content Management and Protection (DCMP) and
the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the
International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Study Group on DCMP.

After the U.S. workshop in March, the “First
International Digital Preservation Interoperability Framework Symposium”
will be held on April 21-23, 2010, in Dresden, Germany, to gather
requirements, technology and best practices on an international level.
“Both roadmaps will be combined and provided to the ISO/IEC study group
to standardize a digital preservation interoperability framework,” said
Chang.

To register for the March workshop or find more
information on the project, see http://ddp.nist.gov.
Reporters interested in covering the workshop may contact Evelyn Brown,
evelyn.brown@nist.gov, (301)
975-5661.

* Lesk’s notes: www.lesk.com/mlesk/ksg97/ksg.html

** See www.nitrd.gov/About/Harnessing_Power.aspx

Media Contact: Evelyn Brown, evelyn.brown@nist.gov, (301)
975-5661