CERN Digital Preservation Strategy: proposal

Digital preservation is “the combination of policies, strategies and actions that ensure access to digital content over time". It is defined as “the method of keeping digital material alive so that they remain usable as technological advances render original hardware and software specification obsolete.” CERN does not have a formal digital preservation policy or strategy, and actions are limited to bit preservation for data stored at the CERN data center, via disk replication and cold tape storage. Accessibility of digital data relies on information repositories (IRs, e.g. CDS, EDMS, Indico, Zenodo, MyFiles, etc.) where data is generally deposited on IT-managed storage systems. The lack of a digital preservation policy and relevant actions threatens to shorten the lifespan of digital assets produced by the organization. This document defines a strategy for CERN to align with global best practices.