Addressing the Uncertain Future of Preserving the Past: Towards a Robust Strategy for Digital Archiving and Preservation. Technical Report. Executive Summary

Storing and curating authentic academic literature and making it accessible for the long term has been a time-honoured task of national libraries. By guarding existing knowledge and facilitating its use to produce new insights, national and university libraries have formed an integral part of the research environment, complementing the roles of other stakeholders such as researchers, publishers and funders. However, recently the digital revolution has modified fundamentally the way that research results are circulated, reviewed, accessed and preserved. Hitherto established models of market dynamics and stewardship need to be rethought and part of the responsibilities of national libraries redefined. This document examines key determinants of the sustainable digital preservation of scholarly records, with specific reference to developing a robust approach to the archiving of such records at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Netherlands. (Contains 1 figure.) [The research described in this report was prepared for the Koninklijke Bibliotheek. For the full technical report, see ED501835. For related research brief, "Digital Preservation: The Uncertain Future of Saving the Past," see ED501767.]