Digital long-term preservation

Digital curation addresses the entire life cycle of digital data, from their creation in the scientific work process to their processing, documentation and publication, all the way through to sustainable data maintenance in the digital archive.

Digital curation and long-term preservation have special significance for the handling of research data because:

• The production of digital data is constantly increasing.
• At the same time, the development cycles of hardware and software are getting shorter.
• Data storage media get old.
• File formats become obsolete.
• The various data requirements are changing on an ongoing basis.

Prudent data management and careful planning of preservation measures are therefore important for ensuring that digital information and documents remain accessible for research also in future.

The content of our digital collections and archives must also be safeguarded for the long term. The ETH Data Archive offers the appropriate solution for ensuring this.