Digital preservation is the set of managed activities that keep digital objects usable, understandable and trustworthy for as long as they are needed - often indefinitely. It is not the same as taking a backup or copying files to a bigger drive. A backup protects you against yesterday's disaster; preservation protects you against decades of format obsolescence, media decay, organisational change and lost context. The goal is not merely that the bytes survive, but that a future user can open, render and rely on the record as authentic evidence.

Practitioners usually frame the challenge around three enemies: technology obsolescence (the software or hardware to read a file disappears), bit rot and media failure (the storage degrades), and loss of context (the metadata that made the object meaningful is gone). Digital preservation is the discipline that manages all three over time.

What it is

  • An active, ongoing programme - not a one-off project - with policy, funding and assigned responsibility.
  • Preservation of the significant properties (the essential characteristics) of a record, not necessarily the original bitstream forever.
  • Maintenance of authenticity: proof, through fixity and audit trails, that the object has not changed unaccountably.
  • Preservation of context and meaning through metadata, so the object remains understandable to its designated community.

What it is not

  • Not backup or disaster recovery alone - those assume the same technology stack will still exist.
  • Not storage capacity - buying petabytes solves nothing if formats become unreadable.
  • Not digitisation - creating a digital copy of a paper record is the start of the problem, not the solution.
In practice. Ask of any collection: "If the vendor vanished and the software stopped installing in ten years, could we still open and trust this file?" If the honest answer is no, you have storage, not preservation. Close that gap with open formats, fixity and documented metadata before the ten years pass.

Key takeaways

  • Preservation keeps digital records usable, understandable and authentic over time - far beyond a backup.
  • The three core threats are technology obsolescence, media/bit failure, and loss of context.
  • It is a funded, ongoing, policy-driven programme, not a purchase of disk space or a digitisation event.

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Last modified: Saturday, 1 August 2026, 10:14 AM