Knygotyra (Dec 2006)
DIGITAL PRESERVATION OF PRINTED CULTURAL HERITAGE IN ESTONIA. STRATEGY. METHODOLOGY. PRACTICE
Abstract
Preservation of national cultural heritage has been during the last years actively discussed both on institutional and state levels. In October 2003 the working group on digital preservation by theMinistry of Culture elaborated preservation guidelines Strategy of digital preservation of Estonian cultural heritage for years 2004–2007. The strategy is based on the principles of eEurope 2002Action Plan (2000) and Lund Principles (2001).The state strategy is aimed to achieve collaboration of different memory institutions in order to elaborate an unified view on cultural heritage and its digitisation as well as to preservation of digitally created cultural heritage. It is also important to guarantee preservation of cultural heritage and to make it accessible to the public use through the contemporary possibilities of informationand communication technologies. Digitisation and preservation of digitized heritage will be coordinated by the state. The main coordinators are the Ministry of Culture, The Ministry of Educationand Science, the State Chancellery and the National Archive.The methodology of decision making for digital preservation is based on the principles of the UNESCO programme Memory of the World. The choice of objects for digitisation is based on need and expediency that can be evaluated on the ground of acultural value of an object, conservation risks, physical condition of an object and necessity of use.In 2004–2005 metadata requirements for digital preservation were elaborated. The guidelines foresee that digitized objects will be described by four categories of metadata: administrative andtechnical metadata, metadata on access inhibitors and restrictions of use and descriptive metadata. Estonian documentary heritage is located today in different memory institutions: in state or public institutions like archives, libraries and museums, in private possession, in religious and scientific institutions and in possession of the third sector (different organisations). For reasons of the historical development considerable part of documentary heritage is also located outside Estonia (Sweden, USA, Canada, Australia, Russia etc).The projects of red books as well as different digitisation projects have been in practice for some years in all Estonian memory institutions. Libraries are pioneers in initiating collaborationprojects in digitisation. Due to the joint efforts of the National Library, the Archive Library of the Estonian Literature Museum and the Tallinn University Academic Library a big collection of old Estonian newspapers is available by internet. The project is titled DEA (Digitized Estonian Newspapers). The aim of the project Red Book of Estonian publications, 1535–1850 was to create a theoretical basis for elaborating criteria that would enable decision making and determination preservation priorities of the Estonian book heritage. At the moment there is not much collaboration between different types of memory institutions. The joint projects like DEA and Red Bookof Estonian Publications give hope that together difficult problems of preservation can be better solved and users will get better access to Estonian cultural heritage.
