National Diet Library
Ensuring long-term preservation and usability of digital information
Questionnaire Survey on Digitization of Audio-Visual Materials and Long-term Preservation of Digital Information
(For target organizations only)
Please download the questionnaire sheet from here.
1. Introduction
Background
The National Diet Library (NDL) is the sole national deposit library in Japan, and as such is responsible for developing a comprehensive collection of publications issued in Japan and preserving them as valuable cultural heritage for future generations. The “publications” the NDL should collect and preserve are not only items published in the traditional paper form. An amendment to the NDL Law to exhaustively collect packaged digital publications such as CDs, DVDs and domestically produced software under the legal deposit system was promulgated on April 7, 2000 and came into force from October 1, 2000. Prior to this amendment, the NDL has been collecting packaged digital publications by legal deposit and purchase. The collection includes floppy disks (FDs), CD-ROMs and other media as supplements to printed materials. In addition, Internet resources have been selectively collected through WARP (Web ARchiving Project). The NDL also produces an enormous quantity of bibliographic data and primary information and provides them to the Diet, the administrative and judicial branches of the government and the people of Japan via the Internet. They are also distributed in packaged digital publication form such as CD-ROM. This digital information is the cultural heritage of the people. The NDL should preserve in the long term this information as well as publications in printed form, and ensure their use.
Fragile digital information
However, digital information is much more fragile than paper.
- Lifespan of digital media is very short compared with printed materials.
- Internet resources tend to vanish very often.
- The use of digital information requires specific playback equipment that is compatible with it, PC, OS or application software. They constantly evolve and often become unusable with obsolescence.
- Easy to falsify.
- Difficult to ensure true and correct copy.
Studies and experiments to solve these problems for ensuring long-term preservation and usability of digital information are actively conducted mainly in European countries, the United States, and Australia.