Presentation: Threats to Preservation

On Dec. 5, David Rosenthal from LOCKSS talked at the CNI meeting in Washington, D.C. His presentation was Threats to Digital Preservation. According to Rosenthal, we must guard against bad things happening and causing failures. What are the threats that he perceives?

• Media failure
• Hardware failure
• Software failure
• Network failure
• Obsolescence
• Natural Disaster
• Operator error
• Internal Attack
• External Attack
• Organization Failure
• Economic Failure

How do we guard against these threats? Rosenthal's presentation does not explicitly state an answer, but you'll find on every slide the words "lots of copies keeps stuff safe." Obviously this is the tactic that Rosenthal and others believes can help guard against these threats. LOCKSS, however, is one of several preservation strategies being developed. At the iPRES conference in October, we heard of other efforts that are underway. If you were unable to attend the conference, and want more than what has been in blog postings, many of the presentations are online here.

---

Technorati tag: Digital Preservation