Preservation Week was created in 2010 because there are over 630 million items in collecting institutions such as libraries that require immediate attention and care.
Preserving books, articles and other important information is no easy task because as many as 80% of these institutions have no paid staff dedicated to carry out these activities, and 22% operate without any collections care personnel. Complicating matters, it is estimated that 2.6 billion items are not protected by an emergency plan, which means these resources are in jeopardy should a disaster strike. One way to protect and preserve these resources, as well as make them more readily available to a wider audience, is digital preservation.
Digital preservation is active management of digital content. Some items are created in a digital format, but many (and all older documents) have to be converted from their original physical format into a digital format. This takes time and can be costly to do, so many collections remain in non-digital formats.
OSTI [3] is the office that develops and maintains efficient, state-of-the-art tools for access [4] and delivery of research results from the entire Department of Energy. OSTI fulfills Department of Energy responsibilities [5] related to the collection, preservation and dissemination of scientific and technical information emanating from the agency’s R&D activities and makes the information globally available in real time, via multiple formats, in ten languages, mobile – at no cost to the user. OSTI is dedicated to the principle that to advance science, research must be shared.
For more than 60 years, OSTI has been a pioneer and lead in open government,and has a proven track record in the delivery of groundbreaking information, tools and services. OSTI’s most recent contributions to making scientific and technical information accessible were recognized in the Department of Energy’s Open Government Plan 2.0 (http://energy.gov/downloads/open-government-plan-20 [6]). The updated plan focuses on collaboration, and lists six new initiatives that DOE has undertaken since the initial plan, which was written in response to President Obama’s Memorandum of Transparency and Open Government that called for “an unprecedented level of openness in government.” Agencies were directed to prepare open government plans that would serve “to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation and collaboration” throughout the Federal Government.
One of the featured new initiatives is OSTI’s ScienceCinema [7] product, and updates listed in the initial plan including the Green Energy Portal [8], ScienceEducation.gov [9], our contributions to Data.gov and transparency (including Science Accelerator [10]), data sets, the National Library of Energy concept, Multilingual WorldWideScience.org [10] and Science.gov [11] are also included.
Digitization makes OSTI’s efforts to share information more widely with more people than ever possible in years past. We support the efforts of our colleagues in ensuring that information is preserved now, and for future users.