Media Release - National Archives of Australia for World Digital Preservation Day
Digital countdown to save the things we want to keep
Urgent action is required to save our digital heritage – the memories, events and documents we have kept on digital media over the past 40 years.
Increasingly, the things we want to keep have been created and stored on digital media, from floppy disks to digital video cassettes. Alarmingly, many once-modern formats are now considered ‘critically endangered’. According to the worldwide Digital Preservation Coalition, such formats include portable magnetic media more than 5 years old, including floppy disks, Zip disks, reel-based magnetic tape, MiniDV and digital audio tape (DAT).
In securing our digital heritage, the National Archives of Australia has led the way in preserving and migrating files on these at-risk media to sustainable formats.