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The Open Secret Of Reliable Digital Preservation Strategies

4 May 2023

The role of open source software in digital preservation: An examination of how open source principles guide digital preservation guidelines, it's benefits and drawbacks.

Open-source software has always been a key resource in digital preservation efforts. The flexibility, public accessibility (allowing users to modify and/or audit it as needed) and often low-cost of open-source software make it an appealing choice for digital archivists not only for its resource efficiency, but because it can also directly increase the chance a digital collection has to survive for extended periods of time. Open-source software can provide more control over the digital preservation process, enabling users to make more specific choices in their selection of tools to better preserve their collections. Let’s explore how open-source principles guide and are reflected in digital preservation guidelines and examine the benefits and drawbacks of using open-source software in your digital preservation system.   


Open Principles

Parallels between open-source principles and concepts that play an important role in guiding digital preservation practice are easy to identify. Providing a framework for collaboration, transparency, and community involvement in both cases increases the efficacy and veracity of their outputs. These principles align well with the goals of digital preservation, which seek to ensure the long-term availability and accessibility of digital information, by encouraging development that can be used and audited by anyone. Open-source principles emphasise transparency, meaning that the source code for the software is publicly accessible and can be scrutinised, modified, and improved by anyone. In a digital preservation context, this transparency enables organisations to have a far deeper understanding of the processes they subject their data to, more control over their digital preservation strategies, to trust their systems more, and to make necessary decisions as technology evolves. This reciprocally improves the custodian organisations understanding of their collections, empowering them to describe and treat future content even more effectively.

The collaborative nature of open-source is also a natural fit for digital preservation: a community of users who share knowledge, expertise, and resources to improve and enhance tools have the capacity to maintain stable software for longer than ephemeral private vendors. Digital preservation also naturally requires multi-disciplinary efforts, not only in the development of guidelines, strategies, and tools, but also in the physical implementation, ongoing usage and maintenance of these systems and practices; frequently requiring the involvement of IT professionals, librarians, archivists, and other highly specialised stakeholders.

Open-source software offers an appealing alternative to the typical approach of proprietary solutions, which often attempt to aggregate many functions into monolithic services to reduce complexity, but in turn can reduce or eliminate the control an archivist has over their collections. In some cases, this can be to the extent that the archivist cannot be reasonably said to be taking true responsibility as the incumbent custodian of their content. They have de facto ceded the decision-making process of how their collections are treated to the vendor. This is not only counter-intuitive to the principles most digital-preservation authorities espouse: assumption of accountability, custodianship, and responsibility for the preservation of their collections on the part of the archivist, it is also dangerous for the collections. The authority on how, when, and why any actions are taken on content should always fundamentally be the archivist in charge of the collections. Any bespoke processes or protected methodologies implemented by proprietary software naturally reduce the precision and quality of the custodians understanding of their own collections. Regardless of their documentation or escrow arrangements, the users will never be able to understand a proprietary solution as closely at the lowest levels as an open one.


Open Software, Open Risks


Despite its benefits, open-source software and open principals naturally imply some disbenefits. One potentially significant drawback of using open-source software in digital preservation is the lack of dedicated support and potential challenges in maintenance. Because open-source software is often developed by volunteers or small organisations, there may not be dedicated support staff available to assist with technical issues or updates. This is a stark contradiction to one of its greatest strengths, the capacity for open-source to endure for longer than proprietary, but the expectation in general software for proprietary to be better resourced than open-source does not necessarily follow in a digital preservation context. Digital preservation is still in IT terms a relatively small market and one that requires highly specific resources to enter. This generally makes digital preservation a less appealing segment for major software vendors, so any totally proprietary software developers tend to be relatively small and not have any significant resource advantage over their open competitors. 


This is also linked to the true cost of using an open solution for digital preservation, or any other complex task: open does not mean free (or even cheap). The saving made not directly paying for the development of the software is frequently nullified by the additional cost of a support or maintenance agreement, which are often an absolute necessity but are specifically required in a preservation context due to the complexity of open solutions and the critical business functions they enable. Ultimately though, open software still enables more choice, even in situations where your open solution ends up costing a similar amount to a private one, and the option for you to use and maintain it totally independently is always there. 


Another potential challenge is compatibility issues between different software tools. Open-source software may not always be compatible with other proprietary software, which can create challenges in integrating different parts of a digital preservation strategy. There may also be concerns with the long-term sustainability of open-source software solutions. Open-source software may not receive regular updates or bug fixes and may become obsolete over time. This is certainly not unique to open software, though, and proprietary digital preservation software that is developed by an ephemeral or non-committed vendor is equally liable to suffer from sustainability challenges. It's also important to note that the root of compatibility issues between proprietary and open solutions is commonly the rejection of interoperable standards on the part of the proprietary developer, not the other way around, but this is irrelevant to an archivist who is deeply immersed in a specific ecosystem of software and who's choice is restricted.



Do what's right by your collections


No matter the benefits and drawbacks of open and proprietary solutions, the optimal solution for any digital preservation challenge will always be decided on a purely case-by-case basis. As tends to be a theme in digital preservation, there is no one size fits all solution. Despite this, there are clear advantages to open-source software that are reflected in the design and principles of digital preservation best-practice guidelines. Our digital curation platform, Curate, is built entirely from the most trusted open-source digital preservation tools available but comes with the user experience and quality of life niceties that you'd expect from a premium, proprietary solution. If you can't quite believe us, check out our totally free live demo to test Curate instantly, or get in touch with us if you'd like to truly experience the best of both worlds and start building your digital collections with Curate today.

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