Atlas in Villa Aldobrandini, Frascati

My  name is Barbara Sierman and I am working as Digital Preservation Manager at the National Library of the Netherlands. In September 2012 I raised the question on my personal blog: Where is our Atlas of Digital Damages? I felt a need for a clear overview of things that can go wrong with digital material. Either because the material was already damaged before it entered the repository, or because preservation actions, or the absence of it, led to damages. I want to show people why digital preservation is important, with evidence and explanations.

This blog post triggered a lot of people and very quickly a Flickr group was set up where people uploaded examples and a blog post of the Library of Congress The Signal mentioned this initiative. I thought it was time for a website.

With this website I want to reach primarily the people that are just starting to take care of digital material, but it is meant to give digital preservation professionals an overview of issues as well.

Want to contribute? If you have a good example of things that are going wrong, drop me a message at info@atlasofdigitaldamages.info with a screendump and an explanation of the cause. I now created a few main topics, but we will see whether the examples will fit in. Stories of lost or damaged collections are also welcome!

I will thank all contributors in the digital preservation community for their input and support. Together we can make digital preservation visible and understandable.