What are current best practices for acquiring & preserving Google Docs?

Mon, 05 Feb 2018 18:56:07 +0000

What are current (2018) best practices for acquiring and preserving records created in Google's cloud platform?

In particular, are there methods that preserve the rich metadata around document creation, editing, and commenting that exist in the native apps?

When should one keep database content in an original format and when to export or flaten it?

Thu, 27 Mar 2014 12:53:13 +0000

There is a lot of invaluable material in relational databases. The original and in some cases propritary formates of some of these systems likely mean that as those systems become less avaliable, or transition to newer versions which don't support older files, it will become incresingly difficult to access the content of a database through it's original software. With that noted, exporting to more generic formats for tabular data, or XML structures for containing relational data information, transform the data and potentialy introduce a range of issues around quality assurance that in the fedility and authenticity of characteristics of the data.

So, in what what cases should one export or migrate data to more common or accessable formats and in what cases should one stick with the original? Similarly, I would be curious to suss out the factors that would prompt an institution to go with one approach over another.

Digital Preservation Q&A - Recent questions tagged migration

What are current best practices for acquiring & preserving Google Docs?

When should one keep database content in an original format and when to export or flaten it?