Digital preservation at the National Library of Norway
This is the home page for the Digital Preservation team of the National Library of Norway. Here we attempt to share documentation related to our digital preservation services and try to blog about various initiatives we are working on.
Digital preservation is about safeguarding digital files, to ensure that their content can still be utilized, understood and used in the future. This means that digital documents, images, websites, audio and video must be securely stored and protected against loss and technical failures. It also means that one must have sufficient knowledge about the preserved content to be able to utilize it, even as technology, software and format support change.
The National Library has a legal mandate to collect, preserve and make accessible all published material that documents Norway and Norwegian affairs. Based on this, the National Library is the most comprehensive and central source of knowledge for this information. All published material means both physical and digitally born material, regardless of medium and form of publication.
The activity is anchored in The Legal Deposit Act, which requires the National Library to ensure that published material is preserved for posterity and can be disseminated to present and future generations. In an era where an increasingly large part of cultural heritage is either digitized or created, published and distributed digitally, this poses new and complex requirements for how preservation is planned, implemented and managed over time.
Through digital preservation, the National Library shall lay the foundation for democratic access to knowledge, public information and understanding of Norwegian history, language and culture – both today and in the future.