We ensure the digital preservation of research datasets and cultural heritage data

Reliable digital preservation

Digital preservation refers to ensuring that digital information remains comprehensible and usable for decades or even centuries, even if file formats, devices and software change over time. Reliable digital preservation requires actively monitoring monitoring integrity of digital objects, changing file formats, keeping multiple copies and maintaining preparedness for a wide range of risks. The service quality is ensured for example by certification.

We provide digital preservation services for the Ministry of Education and Culture: the Fairdata Digital Preservation Service for Research Data and the Digital Preservation Service for Cultural Heritage. Both services are intended for organizations under the Ministry of Education and Culture mandate, and the user organizations retain ownership of the data. The data volume currently preserved has already exceeded two petabytes.

Digital preservation is ensured in cooperation with the user organizations. CSC and the Digital Preservation Services ensure preservation and availability, while the organizations are responsible for access to and comprehensibility of the data. CSC and the organizations are jointly responsible for data usability.

In addition to national collaboration, also European and international collaboration is active. This includes for example Open Preservation Foundation, Digital Preservation Coalition and EOSC working groups.

Digital preservation of research data

Fairdata Digital Preservation Service for Research Data ensures the availability and long-term preservation of digital datasets related to research conducted at higher education institutions and research institutes. This means that research conducted to create the datasets is verifiable and reproducable. The service contributes to the reuse, evaluation and utilization of research data. The service thus safeguards data volumes which are growing at an increasingly fast rate for the use of future generations of researchers. Fairdata Digital Preservation Service for Research Data is part of the Fairdata service package that supports research data management.

Digital preservation of cultural heritage data

The Digital Preservation Service for Cultural Heritage stores the key digital objects of libraries, archives and museums. This includes cultural heritage materials which may have been digitized, or produced directly in a digital format.

The digital preservation of cultural heritage guarantees the usability of datasets, such as:

• digital cultural heritage data subject to statutory preservation, including the National Library of Finland’s online archive and films in the National Audiovisual Archive
• digital documents that are part of the national cultural heritage, such as documentary material received by the National Archives
• digital data repositories falling in the scope of digital preservation and belonging to organizations that are responsible for the preservation of both tangible and intangible cultural heritage, and that operate in the Ministry of Education and Culture’s administrative branch.

Preservation levels

The digital preservation services provided by CSC rely on common digital preservation solution utilised by the services. The digital preservation service solution manages the data storage and guarantees the data integrity at the bit-level for up to several centuries. The service solution provides the foundation for digital preservation, on which services for logical and semantic preservation can be built.

The aim of preservation layers is to ensure that the data remains

• integral and authentic (bit-level preservation)
• usable (logical preservation)
• comprehensible (semantic preservation).

To preserve the data, each one of these layers must be addressed.