Digital preservation at the APNOR Polytechnics in Portugal – Diagnosis of best practices, existing policies and needs: Creation of a proposal for a Digital Plan

Abstract

The possibility of creating a joint digital preservation plan for polytechnic higher education institutions, focusing on the polytechnics of the Association of Higher Polytechnic Institutes of the North Region-APNOR, namely: Instituto Politécnico do Porto, Instituto Politécnico de Viana do Castelo, Instituto Politécnico de Bragança and Instituto Politécnico do Cávado e do Ave, is an important and relevant challenge. Digital preservation is essential to ensure the integrity and accessibility of important data/information over time. Higher education institutions produce a large amount of digital data, such as academic records, work documentation, research papers, dissertations, etc., therefore it´s urgent to ensure that institutional digital memory can be guaranteed in the long term and avoid the risks associated with data/information loss. In addition, polytechnic higher education institutions also have a social responsibility to guarantee that the digital heritage they produce is preserved for the benefit of society, this "study" proposes to assess the existing digital preservation policies in the mentioned institutions, as well as the identification of needs for the creation and/or implementation of new digital preservation policies/plan and challenges. The proposed methodology includes literature review and survey application to the responsible authorities of the institutions. Literature review will identify best practices and standards for digital preservation while the survey will collect information on existing policies and the institutions' needs for the creation and/or implementation of new policies. The aim is to present a digital preservation plan, contributing to the implementation and/or development of best practices to be applied to the universe studied.

Keywords: Digital transformation, Digital preservation, Digital preservation plan.