What should I consider when evaluating a request to delete materials from a digital preservation environment?

Question

The person who asked this question at #digpres14 indicated that her institution has a general policy not to delete things. However, are there exceptions worthy of consideration?

Answer 1

From #digpres14:

It could be useful to generate a written list of all exceptions that would instigate deletion of materials from the preservation environment.

For example, a virus or materials that you legally must destroy.

In other cases, it is probably acceptable and enough to simply remove the pointers to the object without having to wipe that section of the hard drive.

Answer 2

Despite a policy of not deleting objects, an organisation might be confronted with a situation to consider a decision about deleting materials. A description of such a situation can be found in the following article by Tanja de Boer and Matthijs van Otegem: Moving to new digital storage: migrating and reloading collections  http://conference.ifla.org/past-wlic/2012/102-boer-en.pdf  Without discussing whether the right solution was chosen, the fact is that improved versions of an already preserved collection can be offered (by publishers) and this will require organisations to make a decision.