Ensuring long-term preservation and usability of digital information

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Activities of the NDL
• FAQ
• Leaflet: ”Ensuring long-term preservation and usability of digital information”

The National Diet Library (NDL) conducted a survey of the digital materials it has collected and stored, focusing on long-term preservation measures for floppy disks, which are prone to deterioration. This report covers the basics of floppy disk preservation, technical trends in migration, migration methods and actual procedures, and methods for building an environment for using migration artifacts.

• Survey Report on Long-Term Preservation Measures for Floppy Disks (April 2023) (Japanese only)

(1) Survey of domestic institutions on the long term preservation of digital materials

The NDL conducted a large-scale survey to understand the current status, issues, and best practices of efforts related to the digitization of materials and the long-term preservation of digital materials at various institutions in Japan. This report presents the results of a questionnaire survey that received responses from 2,921 institutions, including libraries, museums, art galleries, archives, and others. Also, it includes interviews conducted with some of these institutions.

• Survey of domestic institutions on the long term preservation of digital materials (June 2022) (Japanese only)
• Executive Summary (PDF: 138KB)

(2) Survey on Methods for Inspecting Condition of Optical Discs

Aiming to comprehensively implement preservation measures for over 870,000 optical discs in its collection, the NDL conducted a technical survey on methods to identify media types (ROM, R, RW, etc.) and inspect their condition.

• Survey Report on Methods for Inspecting Condition of Optical Discs (June 2022) (Japanese only)

The NDL conducted a survey on emulation technology, which imitates outdated computers, operating systems (OS), software, etc., on current environments, to aid in examining methods for providing access to electronic information collected and preserved by the NDL. This report provides an overview of emulation technology, recent technological advances, and examples of its use by overseas institutions.

• Survey Report on the Use of Emulation Technology for Long-Term Preservation of Digital Information (July 2021) (Japanese Only)

In order to contribute to consideration for the realization of long-term preservation measures for digital information collected and stored by the NDL, we conducted studies on recent related research papers and efforts of overseas institutions (libraries, archives, museums, etc.) as well as domestic products for long-term preservation of digital information. This report summarizes the results of the studies to provide a multifaceted overview of the latest trends in this field.

• Study Report on Measures for Long-Term Preservation of Digital Information (August 2020) (Japanese only)
• Executive Summary (PDF: 117KB)

The NDL conducted analysis studies on the deterioration of CDs and DVDs in the "packaged digital publications" collected and stored by the NDL, in order to contribute to the selection of materials that should be prioritized for migration, which is a way for ensuring long-term usability. This report shows an overview of study results such as the points that the NDL should bear in mind for deciding on its migration policy.

• Analysis Study Report of Deterioration of Optical Discs [Overview] (February 2020) (Japanese only)

Regarding "packaged digital publications" collected and stored by the NDL, we conducted studies on methods for preserving them in a usable state for a long period of time. In this report, we present the results of the identification of issues aimed at establishing migration procedures with a view to adding them to the NDL Digital Collections as well as the results of consideration and trials of adding preservation metadata required for digital preservation.

• Study report on digital preservation methods for packaged electronic publications held by the NDL [Overview] (August 2018) (Japanese only)

The NDL conducted studies to build a permanent preservation infrastructure that ensures long-term access to digitized content as part of its studies on ensuring long-term usability of digital information. This report presents the results of the studies of overseas research trends on the technological elements assumed to be necessary for building permanent preservation infrastructure.

• Report of technical studies for building permanent preservation infrastructure (May 2017) (Japanese only)

Based on the 5-year plan from FY2006 to FY2010, the NDL conducted studies for ensuring long-term preservation and usability of digital information and released the final report in August 2011 (available only in Japanese). This report sums up the results of each year's studies, clarifies the issues, and presents the future direction of our approaches.

For a summary of each year's studies, please refer to the following pages.

• Summary of studies FY2010
• Summary of studies FY2009
• Summary of studies FY2008
• Summary of studies FY2007
• Summary of studies FY2006

FY2002 to FY2004, the NDL conducted basic research on the current situation of the approaches to long-term preservation of digital information in domestic related organizations and the international trends of research and technology in digital preservation. Based on the results of these studies, we carried out the above FY2006-FY2010 studies.

For summary of each year's studies, please refer to the following page.

• Summary of studies FY2004
• Summary of studies FY2003
• Summary of studies FY2002

The following is a compiled report of FY2003 and FY2004 studies on the usability of packaged digital publications typified by CD-ROM.

• "The Long-term Accessibility of Packaged Digital Publications (NDL Research Report ;No.6)", March 2006