Preserving digital information forever

Well within our lifetime we can expect to see most information being created, stored and used digitally. Despite the growing importance of digital data, the wider community pays almost no attention to the problems of preserving this digital information for the future. Even within the archival and library communities most work on digital preservation has been theoretical, not practical, and highlights the problems rather than giving solutions. Physical libraries have to preserve information for long periods and this is no less true of their digital equivalents. This paper describes the preservation approach adopted in the Victorian Electronic Record Strategy (VERS) which is currently being trialed within the Victorian government, one of the states of Australia. We review the various preservation approaches that have been suggested and describe in detail encapsulation, the approach which underlies the VERS format. A key difference between the VERS project and previous digital preservation projects is the focus within VERS on the construction of actual systems to test and implement the proposed technology. VERS is not a theoretical study in preservation.