Audio Guidance: Ensuring Digital Files Will Be Usable in the Future
How Do I Best Ensure That My Digital Files Will Be Usable In The Future?
Audio: Future Usability
Digital Preservation for any type of file includes many components, such as:
- Choosing a sustainable digital format.
- Choosing a sustainable storage media.
- Identifying recordings that you want to preserve.
- Organizing materials, including tagging, embedding metadata into files, and placing files in structured directories. Naming the directories with dates and events makes them easier to identify in the future.
- Refreshing the data at regular intervals and storing multiple copies (three is recommended) on different media types, and in different geographical locations if possible. Keeping a copy in the cloud can be part of that strategy, but do not rely solely on the cloud as the only storage solution.
- Migrating the data from one file format to another as formats markedly improve and/or evolve.
- Managing the data by utilizing an asset management system that also allows you to easily export content.
Where can I find more information?
- Preserving Your Digital MemoriesFrom the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program, A Collaborative Initiative of the Library of Congress
- Sustainability of Digital Formats From the Library of Congress
- Keeping Personal Digital Audio From the Library of Congress
- Digital Preservation Resources From DigiPres Commons
- Digital Preservation Tools by Function From DigiPres Commons