Data for the future: The German project “Co‐operative development of a long‐term digital information archive” (kopal)

One of the unresolved problems of the global information society is ensuring the long‐term accessibility of digital documents. The project kopal tackles this problem head‐on: in a three‐year project kopal's objective is the practical testing and implementation of a cooperatively created and operated long‐term archival system for digital resources.

The system will be implemented in accordance with international standards for long‐term archiving and metadata within the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) framework. The project partners, Die Deutsche Bibliothek (DDB), Göttingen State and University Library (SUB Göttingen), IBM Deutschland GmbH and the Gesellschaft für wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung mbH Göttingen (GWDG), will establish a cooperatively transferable solution for cultural heritage institutions, as well as for business and industry.

Within the project, the project partners DDB and SUB Göttingen are developing software for the input and access of data, which will be released under an open‐source license.

Long‐term preservation methods and strategies will be discussed in general in the paper.

The project will present a stable and reusable platform for additional partners and users, especially for cultural heritage organisations.

The solution is based on Digital Information and Archiving System (DIAS), jointly devised by IBM and the National Library of The Netherlands in The Hague, and it will be adapted to the needs of the project with several extensions. Establishing a collaborative solution for long‐term preservation is a milestone in the development of systems for the long‐term availability of digital objects.