The Netherlands: pioneer in digital preservation cultural heritage

The Library of Congress has recently issued a joint report on digital preservation and copyright. This authoritative report was compiled by the National Digital Information and Infrastructure Preservation Program, and in cooperation with partners in Australia, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. SURFfoundation is responsible for the Dutch contribution.

The report, International Study on the Impact of Copyright Law on Digital Preservation, notes that digital works are ephemeral, and unless preservation efforts are begun soon after they are created, they will be lost to future generations. The report found that although copyright and related laws are not the only obstacle to digital preservation, there is no question that those laws present significant challenges.

Recommendations are provided for legislative reform and other solutions to ensure that libraries, archives and other preservation institutions can manage copyrighted digital information in a manner consistent with national and international laws.  Specific recommendations include structuring national copyright laws to provide exceptions for preservation institutions to proactively preserve at risk copyrighted material in digital form, subject to measures appropriate to protect the legitimate interests of right holders.

The Dutch contribution to the report takes inventory of current digital preservation efforts in the Netherlands. It also looks at the way in which the Netherlands regulates the preservation of and access to digital materials: through agreements between cultural institutions and entitled parties, which ensure that 20th-century works will remain publicly available. Higher education institutions in the Netherlands, collaborating within SURF, have indicated that they want clarity about preserving and providing access to cultural resources.

The recommendations for reforming Dutch legislation also focus on works from collections in museums, archives and libraries. These works need to be digitized for preservation. A secure network would have to ensure access to these digitized works.

For the Netherlands, the report is particularly important in view of the leading international position which the National Library of the Netherlands has achieved with its e-depository. The Library is often quoted as ‘an example of good practice’.

The importance of the report is underlined by Dr. Wim van Drimmelen, Director of the National Library. In an article in the Dutch newspaper ‘NRC Handelsblad’ of 17 April 2008, the National Library argued for removing the legal obstacles to digitizing 20th-century library collections. In addition, Van Drimmelen argues that clear regulation and legislation in this area is also of paramount importance for new, digitally born documents since their accessibility is under greater threat than that of traditional information carriers.

According to the report, copyright laws should permit preservation institutions to preserve copyrighted works in accordance with international best practices for digital preservation, including making copies for administrative and technical purposes; migrating works into different formats in response to technological developments and changing standards; and maintaining redundant copies among preservation institutions and legally authorized third party preservation repositories to protect against catastrophic loss.

The report further recommends that copyright exceptions for digital preservation should not be conditioned on the category (such as literature or music) or format (such as compact disc or website) of the work.

The Images for the Future project is mentioned at page 48.

Download the report ‘International Study on the Impact of Copyright law on Digital Preservation’

Source: www.surffoundation.nl

Tipped by a post on the weblog Mediaonderzoek.nl I discovered that research conducted by the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA) this November showed that the Dutch not only spend more time online and less on watching television, but also that we watch more online video and behave more like prosumers on the internet than the average European.

Some conclusions on media use in the Netherlands
EIAA conducted research in Europe and interviewed 500 people in the Netherlands. A few interesting conclusions:

• internet penetration in Holland is the biggest in Europe; 81% uses internet weekley, 80% via broadband
• the Dutch surf 5,6 days average a week
• a quarter we can find on fora
• 40% of the Dutch using internet visit social networking sites
• 26% of the 16-24 year olds spend more time on surfing the internet that watching television
• since 2006 the amount of 55 plus people and women using the internet rose by 11%
• the Dutch blog: the amount of people blogging rose by 30% since 2006

Interestingly but not very new, the research shows that there is a clear shift from the traditional media consumption of watching television to watching online in the Netherlands. The amount of Dutch internet users that watch at least once a month online television programmes, films or videoclips rose between 2006 with 133%. 42% watches less TV, 20% listens less radio and 23% reads less often a paper. The shift is a fact.

Building personal archives
Not only do the Dutch ‘passively’ watch video on the internet, the research also concludes that the Dutch are the most active prosumers of Europe. 40% of the Dutch creates online content, whereas the European average is 18%. However this research doesn’t show whether this development is growing fast, you can guess that this will be big in the near future. Camera’s are getting cheaper every day, it becomes regular to have a mobile phone with a camera in it and easy to put it somewhere on the web.

So, everybody can create content when, where and where ever he or she likes. And we do! A collegue of mine just had a baby. In one month you could find more audiovisual content on the web about his life than about mine, and I already exist for 26 years. Research conducted by Ruigrok Netpanel for the Next Web about Web 2.0 in the Netherlands showed that now already 50% of the Dutch people share their photo’s online; and 16% does this with video content.

Personal versus institutional archives?
It seems like there is a tension between the core bussiness of Images for the Future, actually digitizing our audiovisual heritage of the past, and the broad social movement we see in the growth of User Generated Content and thus personal archives. How does this interfere? Or, how can this succesfully come together? How can we unite the world of the archives and the world of the private collections? In Holland there is a project which is trying to open up personal archives; audiovisual material right out of your parents dusty ceiling, this project is called Images of our Past. Why not combine theses personal stories with the official stories which are nationally archived?

Some institutions are already experimenting with this idea. A few Dutch broadcasters already announced plans on working with user generated content platforms. SBS will create it’s own platform like the German ProSieben Sat1 does with Myvideo; NPO will work together with popular social networking site Hyves. These are interesting cases which will show what can be possible and what will be desirible.