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 C. Digital Preservation at the Parliamentary Archives

The Parliamentary Archives has expressed concern that

"[t]he longevity of all Parliament’s digital resources is under threat. Without access to the trusted digital information it needs to preserve (up to and including in perpetuity) neither House will be able to support the work of its members or its administration, nor the requirements of the public for access to Parliamentary information wherever and whenever they want it in the future."

As a result, the Parliamentary Archives has noted the urgency of preserving digital resources, given that “a digital resource which is not selected for active preservation treatment at an early stage in its existence will very likely be lost or unusable in a few years’ time.” The Parliamentary Archives has urged active management of digital resources, including planning for preservation before they are created:

"the nature of technology requires a lifecycle management approach to be taken to the maintenance of digital resources. A continual programme of active management is needed from the design and creation stage of a system onwards, if preservation of that system’s digital resources is to be successful. This in turn leads to the need for much more collaboration between institutions, and changes to traditional IT and IM boundaries within an organization. . . . In addition because digital preservation is a new and emerging business area (unlike analogue preservation), the market for managed services is limited, software is immature, standards are still being developed, cost models are in their infancy, theoretical and practical research is still being undertaken and specialist skills are in short supply."

To counter these concerns, the Parliamentary Archives has published both a Digital Preservation Policy and a Digital Preservation Strategy that aim to ensure that digital resources will be both preserved and accessible to future users, including strategies to mitigate the risk that any technology used will become obsolete. Digital resources means both digital records and digital assets. A digital record is defined as “any information that is recorded in a form that only a computer can process and that satisfies the definition of a record as stated in the Parliamentary Records Management Policy (April 2006).” A digital resource is defined as “the material produced as a result of digitisation, or digital photography; as well as more complex, structured accumulations such as online learning resources, web pages, virtual reality tours and digital audio/visual files.” Digital video recordings of parliamentary debates appear to fall within this definition. The Law Library of Congress