Preserving Digital Collections Needs a Strong Commitment

Transferring printed material into digital has become a main activity in RI large libraries lately.  The library of Indonesia National Armed Forced Historic Center (Perpustakaan Pusat Sejarah TNI), Parahiyangan University, or The Center for Scientific Documentation and Information – Indonesia Institute of Sciences) has been transferring their collection such as books, dissertation, and patent document with digital photocopy or scanner. The later is considered as the largest information centre in the archipelago that stored large amount of full text journal articles and grey literatures, and nearly half of the stored in digital format.

It is not clearly estimated how many gigabytes memories for these reborn digital document has stored in these library server. They also stored and link born digital collection such as electronic journals, books, images which some are unprintable because of the complexity multimedia. Moreover, these libraries also create database for catalog, indecies and abstract or other information retrieval devices.

            It does not mean that their work smoothly carried out, since the digital document is susceptible for corruption so that they cannot be read or accessed properly. The mass storage of digital document in libraries may represent a time bomb that threatens the long-term viability of Indonesia digital libraries. It is because the technology of mass storage is growing fast, while the technology and method for preserving the mass digital document is left behind. The ability to create, a mass and storage digital material far exceeds current capacity to preserve small amount with continuing value.

            Digital document is similar to paper based documents which are easy to deteriorate because of internal aspects chemical and physical substance of the collections, as well as external reasons such as insect, light, temperature etc. Librarians have been combating the deterioration of papers and various nitrate film and other “fragile” collections, now they are facing magnetic and optical media that have different characteristics. These optical and magnetic media is reusable and easy to deteriorate in years, not decades.

            It is important to pay close attention to the media although this technology always improved. The recent research on   magnetic media can be used for 10 to 30 years if they stored and handled properly. There is also optical disk product promise 100 years durability, but this is still in laboratory scale, and has not tested in tropical area where its temperature, light, and humidity threat the existence of this product.