Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Preserving Digital Materials

Product Description The third edition of Preserving Digital Materials provides a survey of the digital preservation landscape. This book is structured around four questions: 1. Why do we preserve digital materials? 2. What digital materials do we preserve? 3. How do we preserve digital materials? 4. How do we manage digital preservation? This is a concise handbook and reference for a wide range of stakeholders who need to understand how preservation works in the digital world. It notes the increasing importance of the role of new stakeholders and the general public in digital preservation. It can be used as both a textbook for teaching digital preservation and as a guide for the many stakeholders who engage in digital preservation. Its synthesis of current information, research, and perspectives about digital preservation from a wide range of sources across many areas of practice makes it of interest to all who are concerned with digital preservation. It will be of use to preservation administrators and managers, who want a professional reference text, information professionals, who wish to reflect on the issues that digital preservation raises in their professional practice, and students in the field of digital preservation. Review In the third edition of Preserving Digital Materials, Ross Harvey (adjunct professor of information management at Monash University) and Jaye Weatherburn (digital preservation officer at the University of Melbourne) offer their beleaguered colleagues a well-organized text that illuminates key digital preservation discussions and topics. . . . Addressing both digital curation and preservation, Preserving Digital Materials possesses numerous strengths. . . . [it] is also remarkably comprehensive in scope. . . . a useful text for audiences from all walks of life who deal with digital resources. With its vast scope and rich detail, readers will no doubt find this book to be an important resource, regardless of whether their interest in digital preservation is personal, academic, professional, or a combination of all three.--Archival Issues As someone not formally trained and sort of new to the field, Harvey and Weatherburn's comprehensive survey is a good companion and tool for advocacy validating and confirming many of my suspicions and instincts regarding the possibilities, practices and workflows, extrapolated from other professional experiences.--Metropolitan Archivist This is an excellent reference and handbook on digital preservation for any institution engaged in digital preservation activities. It would be a worthy addition to circulating collections for academic and public libraries as the general public becomes increasingly aware of and interested in digital preservation.--Technical Services Quarterly The preservation of digital heritage is an ongoing pursuit. After over twenty years of digital preservation initiatives, there is still little standardization. But there is a useful guide: Preserving Digital Materials. Now in its third edition, Ross Harvey, and his new co-author, Jaye Weatherburn, elucidate the ongoing challenges and successes in the quest for digital sustainability. The third edition broadens our perspective about the contemporary preservation environment. It brings the reader up to date on the many robust and international digital programs. Readers will come away from this book understanding how enormous the responsibility of preserving digital content is; they should also be comforted by the variety of strategies being developed. The authors guide us well through this complex terrain.--Michele V. Cloonan, editor-in-chief, PDT&C, and dean emerita and professor, School of Library & Information Science, Simmons College The third edition of Preserving Digital Materials is now the single best volume on digital preservation. Thoroughly updated to incorporate knowledge from fifteen years of best practice, the book offers conceptually clear insight on how to keep digital in