My name is Mike Hunkin and I am the new Digital Preservation Officer at the Library of Birmingham, currently employed on a fixed-term contract until October 2022. I am currently based in Archives and Collections, having worked here for just under nine years between 2006 and 2015. This is a bit of a new area for me, my area of work now focusing on developing systems to ensure the long-term preservation of digital archives and assets held across our library and archive collections.
What is digital preservation?
Managing digital collections is no different to looking after more traditional paper archives in terms of outcome – preservation and access to recorded information remain both sides of the same coin. It is the complex and rapidly changing technological environment in which digital objects exist that presents a fundamental challenge to their long-term survival.

Digital records are inherently unstable. Built from a series of seemingly random binary 1s or 0s (digital bits, or bytes), they are reliant upon a complex series of digital interactions between storage media, software and/or hardware to ensure they can be read. A damaged disk or a series of missing bytes can render a digital item or set of files permanently and irretrievably lost.
In this context the Digital Preservation Coalition defines digital preservation as:
‘the series of managed activities necessary to ensure continued access to digital materials for as long as necessary…and refers to all of the actions required to maintain access to digital materials beyond the limits of media failure or technological and organisational change.’ Continue reading “Digital Preservation at the Library of Birmingham – an introduction”