The German National Library and digital preservation: challenges and opportunities

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Altenhöner, Reinhard

Affiliations: Director – IT, Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Adickesallee 1, D-60322 Frankfurt am Main, Germany. [email protected]

Abstract: The increasing production and use of digital information immediately lead to the challenging task of ensuring the long-term accessibility of digital resources. The changing information technology (IT) development becomes more important for memory institutions. This is a challenge not only for institutions such as libraries, archives, and museums, but also for public administration and industrial enterprises. Beginning in the 1990s, the German National Library (Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, DNB) started collecting and archiving digital publications. It became clearer that long-term preservation has to be done cooperatively in order to share experiences and reduce efforts. Since 2006, the DNB has the legal mandate to collect, archive, index, and enable access to digital publications published in the so-called German Web. This means that the library has to deal with a huge amount of objects. In consequence, the DNB is obliged by these new responsibilities to re-establish the workfl ows internally and to redefine the role and the tasks of the library within the national system of library and information services. This contribution refers to 10 years of activity and particularly highlights the latest developments in Germany.

Keywords: German National Library, digital preservation, Universal Object Format, Open Archival Initiative, Germany

DOI: 10.3233/WDL-120050

Journal: World Digital Libraries - An international journal, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 1-9, 2010