Digital Preservation

Digital Preservation is necessary to ensure continued and reliable access to your digital files. It is a difficult and complex subject, but there are a number of accessible (and often free or low-cost) tools to help support you manage your digital collections.

Getting Started with Digital Preservation

SCA have championed and supported services with their digital preservation, offering training and resources. Most recently we commissioned Karyn Williamson of Digikive to deliver a short series of webinars and videos to explore the fundamentals of digital preservation, and the most useful tools available for limited budgets.

You can also find a useful cheat sheet on getting started here.

Digital Preservation: You’re Already Doing it webinar

Getting Started with DROID – find out more about DROID and download the tool here.

Getting Started with Fixity Pro – find out more about Fixity Pro and download it here.

Getting started with Teracopy – find out more about Teracopy and download it here.

SCA also have other useful tutorials on naming and editing sound files, digital sustainability, and a series on developing digital skills for community archives.

Other Useful Resources

There are many helpful and straightforward resources, and dedicated organisations available to support your digital preservation, a short selection is below.

Digital Preservation Coalition – a membership organisation, the DPC are dedicated to supporting digital preservation through guidance, best practice, and many useful tools. The DPC Handbook is full of useful and practical information, and freely accessible here.

The National Archives – TNA have developed some really useful tools and training, including their popular Novice to Know-How workshop series developed by DPC.

North East Document Conservation Center – Based in Massachusetts, the NEDCC was the first conservation laboratory in the USA dedicated to the conservation and preservation of  paper-based collections. They now also have some very useful tools for managing digitised and digital collections.