Volume 33, Issue 2

1. Digital Preservation as a cooperative task Sponsored by the German Ministry of Education and Research with funding of 800.000 EURO, the German Network of Expertise in long-term storage of digital resources ( nestor ) began in June 2003 as a cooperative effort of 6 partners representing different players within the field of long-term preservation. The partners include: The German National Library (Die Deutsche Bibliothek) as the lead institution for the project The State and University Library of Lower Saxony Göttingen (Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen) The Computer and Media Service and the University Library of Humboldt-University Berlin (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) The Bavarian State Library in Munich (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek) The Institute for Museum Information in Berlin (Institut für Museumskunde) General Directorate of the Bavarian State Archives (GDAB)

History of the UDN Program The Marriott Library at the University of Utah (U of U) has a long history of large-scale newspaper projects beginning with the National Endowment for the Humanities' United States Newspapers Program (USNP) in the 1980s, in which the Library led the effort to catalog and microfilm Utah newspapers. This involvement continues today with the Utah Digital Newspaper (UDN) program, which is digitizing historic Utah newspapers, making them searchable and available on the Internet.

I. Background The impact of digital information environments has been remarkably universal, extending to industry, government, and the academy; to business persons, scientists, engineers, and scholars of the humanities; to the individual in the workplace and the individual in the home. Vast quantities of information in digital form – text, images, audio, video, Web pages, computer programs, databases – are produced, exchanged, and used in a variety of settings, for myriad purposes. These diverse applications of digital technology rest on a common foundation of shared benefits, including powerful search and retrieval capabilities, network delivery, perfect duplication, and interoperability.

Neil Beagrie's report gives an overview of some key international developments in digital preservation, selected because of their potential relevance to the U. S. National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program. The study focuses on major programs in four countries – Australia, France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom – and systematically describes each program's national context, institutional and national initiatives, international initiatives and planned/future international activities. It also describes some key multinational initiatives such as the Open Archival Information System and Preservation Technology for European Broadcast Archives.