From Preservation to Resilience: An Introduction to Building Resilient Digital Collections

Digital preservation is a subject that continues to evolve in complexity as well as in its role within collections management work. Unlike a physical collection—where preservation issues can be easily spotted and collections can remain in well-managed storage with little risk—digital collections maintain a frustrating air of mystery. 

Digital collections must be monitored regularly for potential issues; and any such issues must be actively mitigated against. Additionally, staff face the dual challenge of digital collection precarity and the ever-evolving realm of technology.  

Essentially, preserving a digital collection is a job that is never done—and our understanding of how to do it is always changing. In fact, digital collections (and digital preservation specifically) regularly make the cut as topics for the Center for the Future of Museums’ TrendsWatch report. Their most recent report included the article “Stop, Look, Think: How to manage digital vulnerabilities.”  

What is Digital Preservation?

One of the first items to unpack is what we (as a field) tend to lump into “digital preservation.” References to “digital preservation” can mean tools, devices, or processes.

There can be differing levels of what the term includes. For example, does digital preservation include both born-digital files and digital surrogates? What does it mean to preserve? That the museum owns a copy of a digital file, or that it maintains access to the original digital file? Then, how does one preserve? And perhaps more importantly: Is it enough? Are all the tools, devices, and processes doing enough to safeguard the digital collections for the long-term? 

Questions to ponder as we make our way through this series include:  

• What does it mean to preserve?
• What materials do we consider part of our “digital collection”?
• What does digital preservation look like?
• Is it enough? 

Just as technology evolves, our understanding of what digital preservation means will also change. These questions may appear basic or easy to answer, but they are still core questions to review regularly as part of your digital stewardship activities. 

Shifting Focus from Digital Preservation to Resilience

Too often, our focus stops at digital preservation. Yes, digital preservation is an important piece of managing a healthy digital collection. Nevertheless, there is more for us to consider.   

I recommend a shift from preservation activities toward building the resiliency of your digital collection. When something is resilient, it means that it can withstand pressure or difficulties and make a quick recovery. Our goal should be to create a resilient environment for digital files so that when the inevitable digital decay or loss occurs, the collections can quickly recover.  

As this series progresses, we will review common technical and logistical challenges connected to digital collections. We will then tackle core elements of building digital resiliency with digital collection basics: digital file integrity and access. Finally, we will shift into resiliency buildout with recommendations for how to detect and repair preservation issues, and how to protect a digital collection by building an actionable plan for digital resiliency.    

Additional Reading

As we move toward a more resilient digital future, you may wish to revisit past posts that dive deeper into digital collection fundamentals as well as past coverage of digital preservation. Please see these previously published posts on Lucidea’s Think Clearly blog:   

Digital Collection Fundamentals  

• Building a Comprehensive Museum Digital Program
• Figuring out a Museum DAMS Solution When You Only Have a CMS

Digital Storage 

• Strategies Toward a Museum Digital Storage Solution
• Considering a Museum Digital Storage Approach 
• The Purpose of Museum Digital Storage
• Requirements for Museum Digital Storage

Digital Preservation 

• Museum Digital File Preservation: File Integrity  
• Museum Digital File Preservation: File Access
• Museum Digital Projects: Digital File Storage

Building the Foundation for Digital Resilience

Developing a foundational understanding of digital preservation—and assessing what it looks like at your museum—is key to moving toward digital resiliency.   

With this series, it is my hope that you leave with a nuanced understanding of how to move past just digital preservation into digital resiliency and have actionable steps for how to get there.  

Please join us for the next post in this series: Common Challenges with Digital Collections.