Seeing the whole elephant: an integrated approach to managing preservation

Today’s hybrid collections demand new ways of thinking about preservation. There is a need for an integrated approach combining the current largely disparate fields of digital and physical preservation, to inform prioritisation of information resources requiring preservation attention, assist in shaping integrated workflows, and enable sharing of strategies across physical and digital formats. This paper explores an integrated approach through the analogy of the traditional Indian story of the six blind men and the elephant. It investigates some preventive and copying strategies as examples of approaches that apply these common principles across digital and physical formats, and concludes with observations on the benefits of seeing the whole preservation elephant.

当今的混合馆藏亟需全新的保护思路。当前数字保护与实体保护两大领域仍存在较大割裂，亟需一套整合式方案：该方案可用于明确需优先开展保护的信息资源、助力构建整合型工作流程，并推动实体与数字载体间保护策略的共享。本文以印度传统寓言《盲人摸象》为类比，探讨此类整合式保护方案。文中以若干预防性保护与复制策略为案例，展现了在数字与实体载体场景中应用通用保护原则的实践路径，并最终以探讨全面把握保护工作全貌的益处作为结语。