Long-term Preservation at the Bavarian State Library

The Bavarian State Library offers to its users access to a diversity of digital documents. Those include publications stored on physical data storage media (floppy disks, CD-ROM, DVD, tapes) as well as online publications (digital monographs and periodicals, databases, websites and digitized resources produced by the Munich Digitization Center) that are published through networks only. Access to those digital resources can be free or limited due to licensing agreements (e.g. only for registered users of the library).

The long-term preservation of as well as the maintenance of access to the digital data pose new technical and organisational challenges to the Munich Digitization Center/Digital Library, because

• data storage media quickly become obsolete, data on old data storage media are damaged or access to them is impossible due to the lack of appropriate devices
• data formats change fast, older files are not usable with new applications
• online publications are short-dated and the sources they refer to are often no longer available
• licensing agreements in many cases only cover the newest volumes of digital publications, the older volumes can not be obtained from the publisher anymore.

The Munich Digitization Center/Digital Library has set itself the goal to permanently maintain access to those digital documents for future generations of library users.

V. 4.2.1 en