"Digital Preservation Policy." State Library of Queensland. 3 April 2008. 12 March 2009. http://www.slq.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/109550/SLQ_-_Digital_Preservation_Policy_v0.05_-_Oct_2008.pdf
The digital preservation policies of the State Libraries of Queensland and Victoria begin in an expectedly similar fashion. Both include a succinct purpose statement that deftly describes what each policy aims to accomplish. After this, however, some differences begin to emerge.
Queensland's policy acknowledges the ever-changing aspect of the digital world and its potential impact both technologically and organizationally on the institution. Victoria's policy contains no such statement. Each policy also includes a 'Scope' component, yet the two policies seem to be both at odds and in agreement with one another on a few separate fronts here. Each policy includes in its scope those materials published in their respective states, digital surrogates of materials in their collections, electronic periodicals not included in PANDORA, and those digital materials that are created by and for the respective state libraries. However, in Victoria's scope, it includes those "electronic publications selected by the State Library of Victoria and preserved on PANDORA by the National Library of Australia," whereas Queensland seems to exclude those materials already preserved by PANDORA (Victoria). Additionally, Queensland states its scope to encompass "audio and visual collections, and digital content on physical carriers," while Victoria states that "CD audio and DVD media not unique or significant to the State Library of Victoria" does not fall within its scope (Queensland 1; Victoria). Victoria's scope does, however, include "video and computer games and/or developmental material created in Victoria or by Victorians" (Victoria). So, in a way, perhaps Victoria is consciously limiting its scope to those materials it believes will be of immediate interest to its constituency rather than creating too daunting a scope.
In terms of creating digital content, each policy states its adherence to best practice while also giving a commitment to promoting "open standards-based formats" that are "not reliant on any proprietary application or device" (Queensland 2; Victoria) Yet, again, the two policies seem to not agree on what best practice is. Victoria has its own standard termed the A400 which states that images will be captured at 400 PPI at an A4 size. Queensland, on the other hand, has an extensive set of standards that relate to audio, image, and video capturing. I would imagine that Victoria may well have such standards as well given that their policy seems to suggest they have CD audio and DVD media in their collection that falls under their scope. For whatever reason, though, they seem to have chosen not to include such information within their policy statement.
Another area where the two policies appear to diverge is on metadata. Victoria declares in its policy that metadata will be added at the time of creation in Photoshop or another program that allows metadata to be captured and gathered "within the file itself" (Victoria). Queensland has its own Digital Standard for Metadata that is quite detailed.
Finally, both policies make mention of the Commonwealth Copyright Act of 1968 and state that they will abide by said act in their preservation actions. Queensland, interestingly, makes mention of another act: The Copyright Amendment Act of 2006 which "gives provisions to key cultural institutions to make preservation copies of material that is of cultural or historical significance to Australia" (Queensland 3). It is somewhat odd that Victoria would make no mention of this act, yet one can safely presume the act applies to them as well.
As a truly final note, I browsed a few websites of some of the more renowned museums across the country. I was unable to find a true 'policy' statement anywhere. In fact, only the J. Paul Getty museum seemed to provide a good deal of information on the digitization process as well as on data standards and guidelines. The other museums I looked at contained no such information that I was able to easily access. This, of course, does not mean it is not there, rather that the access points I tried were unsuccessful.
No comments:
Post a Comment