Digital objects have a value. Here the term value can be defined in many ways including “historical, ethical, aesthetic, scholarly, public policy, and institutional, which may or may not be financially quantifiable” (from the Blue Ribbon Task force report).
The JISC wants projects to assess the value of their digital objects and preserve accordingly. Currently the JISC asks that projects keep their Web sites available for 3 years after the end of the project. It also recommends that projects use open and interoperable standards as far as possible. In the future, funding decisions may be dependent on the ability of projects to preserve their outputs. Digital preservation is very important to the JISC.
The JISC sees the key drivers for preservation as being:
- The obligation to provide access to resources and allow their reuse [...find out more]
- Strategic, legal and contractual reasons (regulatory obligations including FOI, Data Protection Act etc.) [...find out more]
- Economic reasons (use of tax payers’ money, effort in creating resources, etc.) [...find out more]
- Reputation reasons (your institution’s reputation, JISC’s reputation and your own reputation) [...find out more]
- Responsibility to users [...find out more]
- Corporate memory (your institution needs to keep a record of work carried out) [...find out more]
- Cultural reasons (as a cultural snapshot) [...find out more]
