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Any written policies on retention of digital surrogates?

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I am looking for examples of policies/standard operating procedures for the retention of digitized surrogates of archival collections and/or records.

I have had colleagues at other archives say that they cover digital surrogates - whether created through preservation reformatting, researcher requests, or for public access - as having the same retention schedule as the original record. I have found some digital preservation and digitization policies that address this indirectly, but I am looking for concrete policies. Thanks!

asked by lljohnston on 15 Sep 2014 · 348 views

Anyone? Anything? I am having zero luck with this endeavor here, on Twitter, and on FB. At this point I'd be happy to hear about recognized local practices that _aren't_ documented.

— lljohnston, 16 Sep 2014

2 answers

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Possibly. The West Yorkshire Archive Service mentions keeping copies of born-digital deposits in different locations in different media in section 8 of their Digital Archives Policy: http://www.archives.wyjs.org.uk/documents/archives/WYAS%20Digital%20Archives%20Policy.pdf.

answered by alisdavidson on 1 Oct 2014

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Hi Leslie,

I can't think of any digital preservation policies I've seen that refer to retention periods. I wondered if this kind of statement is more likely to be found in a recordkeeping policy so looked around and found the UNs 'Recordkeeping Requirements for Digitisation' - https://archives.un.org/sites/archives.un.org/files/Standard_RKreqfor%20digitisation3.pdf (2009)

A quick skim of the document looked promising, eg 'Image or digitised copies of United Nations records are themselves UN records and are subject to the same rules and regulations established by ST/SGB/2007/5 and ST/SGB/2007/6. Failure to follow these regulations would constitute a breach of United Nations records policy. Physical and digital records that have reached the end of their lifecycle can only be disposed in accordance with established guidelines.'

HTH,

Maureen.

answered by mopennock on 15 Nov 2014