Effective methods to safely store the ever-growing amount of digital information are of the utmost importance for heritage institutions today. This was the central focus of this week’s symposium by the National Coalition for Digital Preservation (NCDD) in The Hague. The symposium assembled up to 150 representatives from the cultural heritage, science, media and archival sectors.
During the conference, the Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision and the Royal Library announced that they would use one another's digital infrastructure to host backup copies of their data. This should lead to an improvement in sharing expertise and decrease storage costs, as the backup data from both institutions are currently safeguarded at commercial facilities. Data of the Royal Library have already been accommodated at Sound & Vision’s premises and soon enough the reverse data flow will be initiated as well.
Jan Müller, managing director of Sound & Vision, said about the agreement: "Storage is of extreme importance for us, in order to gain full control about safeguarding our digital collections. Sound & Vision hopes to share both experience and facilities with other institutions, in order to work ever more efficient towards the preservation of cultural heritage."
Managing Director Bas Savenije spoke highly of the collaboration: "By establishing this backup system, the groundwork has been laid to expand cooperation in storing and keeping accessible digital information sustainably in these two institutions and the other partners of the NCDD."
The National Coalition for Digital Preservation (NCDD) was established in 2008 to promote the sustainable management of digital information in the Netherlands. The NCDD partners consist of Sound & Vision, the Royal Library, Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS), the National Archives and the Cultural Coalition for Digital Preservation led by EYE Film Museum. The partners in the Coalition work on a national infrastructure for the entire public sector.
Links
- Report of the symposium (NL)
- Press release (NL)