CHALLENGES OF DIGITAL PRESERVATION IN AFRICA
Introduction
Digital preservation can be defined as the process and activities
which stabilize and protect digital records and publications in forms which are
retrievable, readable and usable over time. Digital
preservation could also be defined as a set of processes and activities that
ensure continued access to information and all kinds of records, scientific and
cultural heritage existing in digital formats. This includes the preservation
of materials resulting from digital reformatting but particularly information
that is born-digital and has no analog counterpart.
Digital preservation is an ongoing process of managing data for continued
access and use.
The adoption of
Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) has revolutionized the conduct of
business and has greatly enhanced information accessibility. In particular,
organizations are not only able to store large amounts of information but can
also have quick access to it. This has improved service delivery and has
ensured that policy makers react rapidly to social and economic developments.
Further, the general public can also access information in remote areas. ICT
has enabled archivists, records managers and librarians to carry out their
mandate: that of information capture, preservation and dissemination. While use
of ICT has occasioned these many benefits it has also brought challenges that
have to be addressed. Principally, this new development has led to the
generation of information in digital form which has to be managed. In spite of
the benefits accruable, the technology has presented tremendous challenges
which information professionals should be concerned with.
The
purpose of preservation is to ensure protection of information of enduring
value for access by present and future generations (Conway, 1990: 206).
Libraries and archives have served as the central institutional focus for
preservation, and both types of institutions include preservation as one of
their core functions. In recent decades, many major libraries and archives have
established formal preservation programs for traditional materials which
include regular allocation of resources for preservation, preventive measures
to arrest deterioration of materials, remedial measures to restore the
usability of selected materials, and the incorporation of preservation needs
and requirements into overall program planning.
CHALLENGES OF DIGITAL PRESERVATION
An African perspective on
preservation ought not to be different from other perspectives. However,
digital preservation is often discussed in terms of technology, infrastructure
and practices. Africa is largely composed of developing nations and thus has peculiar
problems.
In African
institutions these factors are attributed to:
Information
Policies
Most African
countries have no policies on handling information be they in print; let alone
in electronic format. In some African countries, years after independence they
are still struggling with enacting a libraries act and as a result most
institutions operate within a no policy framework. An enabling policy framework
would allow institutions to implement various preservation strategies that are
in line with their own parent institutions but operate within the overall
country policy framework. These policy frameworks are essential especially if
they can feed into broader continental policies such as the NEPAD initiative
(The New Partnership for Africa’s Development which is a VISION and STRATEGIC
Framework for Africa’s renewal). The NEPAD initiative itself is very silent on
the preservation of Africa’s knowledge resources although it places prominence
on the improvement of information and communication infrastructure (ICT). The
improvement of ICT infrastructure will do well if there are policy frameworks
at the country level that support the preservation and permanent storage of
African knowledge resources wherever they might be found and in whatever format
they might in.
Infrastructure
Africa’s
infrastructure is still lacking in handling large preservation of knowledge
resources, especially resources that are in electronic form. Access to ICT
facilities is a daily struggle for most institutions that are just barely
managing to maintain access to print resources to be able to meet the daily
requirement for academic learning in higher educational institutions.
Financial
Constraints
Preservation of
knowledge resources is a continuous process not just a one off issue. To
implement an effective and efficient preservation policy, there is need for
commitment at both the institutional and national levels that preservation of
the knowledge resources will be an incremental process that will be carried on
from one generation to another. This effort entails that financial resources be
committed to such a venture over long periods of time. This trend in funding
has affected all areas of library operations including money that could be
allocated for preservation of scholarly information materials. Financial
commitments would also be needed to purchase and preserve the digital knowledge
resources to permanently make them accessible to users, now and in the future.
Financial
resources available for libraries and archives continue to decrease and will
likely do so for the near future. The argument for preserving digital
information has not effectively made it into public policy. There is little
enthusiasm for spending resources on preservation at the best of times and
without a concerted effort to bring the issues into the public eye, the
preservation of digital information will remain a cloistered issue. The
importance of libraries has been diminished in the popular press as the
pressures from industry encourage consumers to see libraries as anachronistic
while the Internet and electronic products such as Microsoft Encarta are
promoted as inevitable replacements. Until this situation changes, libraries
and archives will continue to be asked to do more with less both in terms of providing
traditional library services, as well as new digital library services:
preservation will have to encompass both kinds of collections.
Technical
Knowledge
Technical
knowledge on the digital elements of electronic documents is largely lacking
among staff that are in preservation departments. The presence of preservation
departments in most of the libraries and information centers is really in name
only as most of them concentrate on book and journal binding. This is coupled
with the lack of preservation training. This lack of knowledge extends to
deficient know-how on the equipment and software that is required for the
preservation of digital information resources.
Digital
Technology Challenges
Digital
technology poses several challenges in the preservation of digital information
resources. These are among others; technology comes in different formats, the
cost of maintaining international standards of digital formats is expensive as
it is often based on paying for upgrades to match the technology both the
hardware and software. These come with subscriptions costs; so in essence a
library/information center/archival center would have to subscribe to hardware;
software and then to the electronic journal. This is unlike the paper format
which has relatively changed very little since it was discovered as papyrus in
Egypt 3000 BC. The electronic document is fairly new and has changed forms
since then. If it is not the document changing from MS Word, PDF, html XML etc;
it is the software requirement to be able to open and read the document. For
example, if the document is in PDF you will need a PDF reader; JPEG would
require a JPEG; just as a TIFF formatted document would require a Tiff reader.
This means that institutions are always forced to change the facilities so they
can meet various requirements such as software and hardware. Digital
preservation presumes that there should be constant and continuous learning on
the part of preservation staff both in software knowledge as well as hardware.
This is because digital preservation methods are always changing depending on
the nature of the hardware and software applied.
Legal
Barriers
Digitization
of information requires obtaining copyright permission from various publishers
to be able to duplicate anything in large quantities. However, most licensing
agreements for journals or books produced by major publishers prohibit
duplication of electronic documents or local storage of the document. What is
allowed when one has a subscription is usually the online access to the
particular journal for instance, without the subscribing institution having
permanent access to content of the journal. Once subscription ends, access to
the electronic content of journal is not possible. It is unlike in the print
subscription model where once one has subscribed to the journal, the
institution will have permanent access to the journal because the journal will
be physically present the libraries own space.
Media Deterioration
Recording media for digital materials
are vulnerable to deterioration and catastrophic loss, and even under ideal
conditions they are short lived relative to traditional format materials.
Although librarians/archivists have been battling acid-based papers,
thermo-fax, nitrate film, and other fragile media for decades, the threat posed
by magnetic and optical media is qualitatively different. They are the first
reusable media and they can deteriorate rapidly, making the time frame for
decisions and actions to prevent loss is a matter of years, not decades. While acid paper is prone to
deterioration, becoming brittle and yellowing with age, the deterioration may
not become apparent for some decades and progresses slowly. It remains possible
to retrieve information without loss once deterioration is noticed. Digital
data recording media may deteriorate more rapidly and once the deterioration
starts, in most cases there may already be data loss. This characteristic of
digital forms leaves a very short time frame for preservation decisions and
actions.
Technological Obsolescence
More
insidious and challenging than media deterioration is the problem of
obsolescence in retrieval and playback technologies. Information technologies
are essentially obsolete every 18 months. Innovation in the computer hardware,
storage, and software industries continues at a rapid pace, usually yielding
greater storage and processing capacities at lower cost. Devices, processes,
and software for recording and storing information are being replaced with new
products and methods on a regular three- to five-year cycle, driven primarily
by market forces. This dynamic creates an unstable and unpredictable
environment for the continuance of hardware and software over a long period of
time and represents a greater challenge than the deterioration of the physical
medium. Many technologies and devices disappear as the companies that provide
them move on to new product lines, often without backwards compatibility and
ability to handle older technologies, or the companies themselves disappear.
Records created in digital form in the first instance and those converted
retrospectively from paper or microfilm to digital form is equally vulnerable
to technological obsolescence.
Established Standards
Another challenge is the absence
of established standards, protocols, and proven methods for preserving digital
information. With few exceptions, digital library research has focused on architectures
and systems for information organization and retrieval, presentation and
visualization, and administration of intellectual property rights (Levy and
Marshall). The critical role of digital libraries and archives in ensuring the
future accessibility of information with enduring value has taken a back seat
to enhancing access to current and actively used materials. As a consequence,
digital preservation remains largely experimental and replete with the risks
associated with untested methods; and digital preservation requirements have
not been factored into the architecture, resource allocation, or planning for
digital libraries.
Proliferation of document and media formats
There is a proliferation of document and
media formats, each one potentially carrying their own hardware and software
dependencies. Copying these formats from one storage device to another is
simple. However, merely copying bits is not sufficient for preservation
purposes: if the software for making sense of the bits (that is for retrieving,
displaying, or printing) is not available, then the information will be, for
all practical purposes, lost. Libraries will have to contend with this wide
variety of digital formats. Many digital library collections will not have
originated in digital form but come from materials that were digitized for
particular purposes. Those digital resources which come to libraries from
creators or other content providers will be wildly heterogeneous in their
storage media, retrieval technologies and data formats. Libraries which seek
out materials on the Internet will quickly discover the complexity of
maintaining the integrity of links and dealing with dynamic documents that have
multimedia contents, back-end script support, and embedded objects and programming.
Concerns of authenticity and
reliability
The authenticity and reliability of
electronic records are often questioned because of possible changes to content
or structure. Authenticity can be defined as the ability of the records to be
reliable over time and act as evidence of organizational transactions.
Reliability on the other hand, refers to a record’s authority and
trustworthiness, and this is tied to the ability of a record to stand for a
fact it is about. A number of authors among them, Hoffman and MacNeil, have
argued that there are no guarantees of authenticity and reliability in the
electronic environment, as records can be deleted or changed at any time. It
is, therefore, important that electronic records are managed to ensure that
they remain authentic and reliable as evidence. Perhaps in the paper
environment, one can say that this is more straightforward, as records are
physical objects, and this makes identification of their characteristics easier
than it is in the virtual world. The records provide evidence of actions, but
the computer systems may fail to capture the necessary information about the
context of the creation and the use of records.
Access
to electronic records and concerns of privacy
The use of computers has enabled
organizations to create databases that now handle huge amounts of data on-line,
which is made accessible anywhere and anytime. This has raised concerns that if
the information is not properly managed, it may be made available too easily,
resulting in lack of protection for the citizen’s individual rights. Further,
the vast amount of information maintained about individuals by both government
and private organizations threatens their privacy. Ojedokum has highlighted
some of the privacy infringement as unauthorized acquisition of data,
unauthorized penetration into computer networks. Computers allow fast and
inexpensive communication of information and the collection and storage of
large amounts of data. At the same time, these capabilities allow individuals
and organizations to access information.
Power
cuts and backup strategies
Power
cuts and irregular electricity supplies are a major barrier. In most African
countries there are limited power distribution networks which do not even reach
rural areas where the majority of the population lives. African cities with
higher population that have been experiencing power cuts include but are not
limited to Accra, Dares Salaam, Lagos, Gaborone, Nairobi, Harare etc. These
power cuts have disrupted business operations. Increased dependence on
computers and their services for data processing also means increased reliance
on the power supplies that keep the systems operating. Power failure means that
organizations may lose valuable information and time. It is estimated that 50-70%
of businesses that lose their data due to power cuts never recover it, and some
go out of business. There is a need, therefore, for systems that will maintain
quality power supply and protect electronic systems.
Internet
Bandwidth (Digital Divide)
The
digital divide is still a major hindrance. In many parts of Africa there is
little access to computers and the Internet. In those parts where there is
Internet access, the resources, such as bandwidth, are severely limited or
extremely expensive. Some digital preservation systems, such as LOCKSS, have
questionable applicability. In the case of LOCKSS, a group of sites
collaboratively maintain the integrity of collections. LOCKSS, however, does
not cater for unstable and irregular bandwidth availability – its algorithms
will not make the most efficient use of bandwidth and may exacerbate problems
at sites with poor bandwidth. All online archives need to make use of bandwidth
in a way that is both minimal and cognizant of the differences among sites.
Skills
and Education
Librarians,
archivists and information professionals in African institutions are arguably
not as technically skilled as their counterparts in other parts of the world.
The availability of computer systems in some parts of the continent has the
effect that curators of information do not receive sufficient training in
electronic systems. Digital media is not the norm for many forms of
communication and information storage. The level of education of the general
population in many African countries also is a problem. The number of literate
individuals, as well as the number of individuals with access to a computer and
the Internet is lower than elsewhere in the world. This creates a challenge for
digital preservation both in terms of collection building, especially for
end-user submissions, and dissemination. Novel solutions are needed for both
these problems to make digital archives effective.
Conclusion
Digital
collections facilitate access, but do not facilitate preservation. Being digital
means being ephemeral. Digital places greater emphasis on the here-and-now
rather than the long-term, just-in-time information rather than just-in-case.
The research program for digital preservation has only recently been initiated
to develop strategies, guidelines, and standards. The challenges to digital
preservation are considerable and will require a concerted effort on the part
of librarians and archivists to rise up to these challenges and assert in
public forums the importance of protecting a fragile digital heritage.
References
1. Douwe Drijfhout. 2006. Challenges in terms of Digital
Preservation. LIASA Conference 2006.
www.nlsa.ac.za/...preservation.../Drijfhout.Challenges%20in%20terms
%20of%20Digital%20P reservation.pdf
2. Christine W. Kanyengo. 2006. Managing Digital Information
Resources in Africa: Preserving the Integrity of Scholarship
3. Hussein Suleman. An African Perspective on Digital Preservation
4. Margret Hedstrom. Digital Preservation: A Time Bomb for Digital
Libraries www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/recordDetail?accno=EJ586788
5. Margret Hedstrom. Digital Preservation: Problems and Prospects
www.dl.slis.tsukuba.ac.jp/DLjournal/No.../1-hedstrom.html
6. Terry Kuny. 1997. A Digital Dark Ages? Challenges in the
Preservation of Electronic Information. 63rd IFLA Council and General
Conference
http//:archive.ifla.org/IV/ifla63/63kuny1.pdf
7. Segomotso Masegonyana Keakopa. 2008. Trends in Long-Term
Preservation of Digital Information: Challenges and Possible Solutions for
Africa www.linkpdf.com/download/dl/segomotso-keakopa-.pdf
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