ZBW is once again awarded the nestor Seal for trustworthy digital archives
Kiel/Hamburg, 4 December 2024: Researchers expect libraries to reliably archive their publications for generations to come. Digital preservation at the ZBW fulfils these expectations and has now been awarded the international nestor Seal for trustworthy digital archives for the second time, underlining the reliability and importance of the ZBW as a partner for science.
How has the distribution of income and wealth developed in Germany? What changes can be seen in trade flows? And how is the employment structure changing? Answers to such questions require access to older scientific publications. To ensure that they remain permanently available, they must not only be stored, but also continuously adapted to technological progress - for example to new software and hardware standards.
This is not just about ensuring technical readability. The interpretability of the content of digital objects must also be guaranteed in the long term. At the same time, new application scenarios and user requirements demand ongoing maintenance and updating of the archived data, for example to link different data sources. Digital preservation therefore places high demands on technical, content-related and organisational reliability.
Digital preservation at the ZBW fulfils these requirements to a particularly high degree. This has now been confirmed once again by the award of the international nestor Seal for trustworthy archives. Back in 2017, the ZBW was the third institution in Europe to receive this prestigious award. The certification was based on a comprehensive evaluation process in which a total of 34 criteria were examined.
Yvonne Tunnat, expert for digital preservation at the ZBW, explains: "It is crucial for our users that their publications remain reliably available in the long term - even after many years. The documentation published as part of the nestor Seal makes our working methods transparent and creates trust in the quality of digital preservation at the ZBW."
