Digital Preservation of Cultural and Historic Resources of India: The Role of Libraries and Government of India

Digital preservation means preservation and documentation of the original text with the help of information technology which facilitates greater access for scholars and researchers. Digital preservation ensures that each necessary component of the digital materials should be migrated, preserved or emulated. This paper makes an attempt to discuss the essence of digital preservation and the advantages of digital preservation over the same for the paper based media and the techniques used to preserve digital materials. The two long-term digital preservation approaches often encouraged by the archival and library preservation communities are migration and emulation. Familiarity with IT infrastructure, including hardware, software and web development, acquaintance about the methodology of digitization across from text to images, floppy disks to audio and video DVDs and key metadata standards used are the essential qualities of the person handling digital preservation. This paper also includes the different preservation activities taken by various Indian libraries and the Government of India.