Shooting at a moving target | Digital Preservation Coalition

One of the most exciting (or is that offputting?) things about digital preservation is that things don’t stay still – new formats and software are appearing all the time. The sheer variety of formats out there and which are continuing to be developed can make the task of “keeping up” with technological advances seem overwhelming. There’s a massive temptation to leave the problem to someone else – either the provider of your preservation software or maybe to your successors.

DO NOT GIVE IN TO THAT TEMPTATION!

Why? Because this is not responsible approach – it’s not digital preservation at all. When we advocate for digital preservation either within our organisations or to the wider world we talk about how it isn’t just “backing up”. It’s precisely this kind of work that we mean: keeping an eye on software developments and file formats. It’s an enormous topic so where do we even start? This is the point where you might definitely feel like giving up!