The majority of new material published today is created in digital format, and much of it remains exclusively digital forever.  Additionally, a great amount of older material which was not created in digital format is undergoing a digitization effort to allow for better conservation and accessibility.

Tasked with preserving the collective memory and cultural heritage of their constituencies, national libraries and cultural archives around the world are taking an increasingly proactive approach to the preservation of digital information. 

To help these institutions fulfill their mission and ensure that cultural heritage assets remain accessible for future generations, Ex Libris offers a highly-scaleable, secure, and easily managed digital preservation system.

 

 

The Digital Preservation Challenge

• Scale: With the tremendous increase in electronically-generated and digitized material over the past decade, national collections contain many millions of digital items, including digitized prints, electronic articles, audio-visuals, and Websites.
  
  
  
• Lifecycle: Electronic publications, for example Websites, are subject to constant update, resulting in shorter information lifecycles.  A digital preservation system must therefore support large-scale timely ingest of new material, as well as the ability to manage different versions of the material.
  
  
  
• Format: As digital formats continue to change over time, these institutions must ensure this content is preserved so that it can be viewed, listened to, and explored in the future, even if the original technology becomes obsolete.
  

The Ex Libris Solution: Connecting Past, Present, and Future

Designed in collaboration with the National Library of New Zealand and reviewed by an international peer group of recognized leaders and innovators, the Ex Libris Digital Preservation System enables national and cultural institutions to preserve the heritage of the past, leveraging the most current technologies, for the benefit of future generations.

• Scalable: Built on a distributed architecture that can support multiple flexible server configurations, the system is designed to handle extremely large digital collections.  By separating the permanent and working repository, it offers the security and redundancy required to ensure the safety of collections.
  
  
  
• Expandable: The Digital Preservation System supports the functional needs of institutions that receive vast numbers of digital items on an ongoing basis.  Batch loads, staging areas, and multiple deposit hierarchies enable users to manage the ingestion of new material efficiently and effectively.
  
    
• Flexible: Easy set up options allow institutions to configure the system to support their unique requirements and adhere to specific governing bodies guidelines.
  
  
  
• Standard-based: Based on the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) model and conforming to Trusted Digital Repository requirements, the system provides national institutions with the infrastructure and technology needed to preserve and facilitate access to the digital heritage collections under their guardianship.
  
  
  
• Accessible: Delivery of preserved digital entities is enabled via viewers relevant to the constantly evolving format types—supplied as part of the system and via third party applications.  With built-in integration capabilities, the system can accept delivery requests from discovery and delivery applications such as Primo while ensuring item-level access rights are enforced.