Threats to digital Materials
Data curation preservation issues : Threats to digital Materials
Digital curation involves the practice of choosing,
conserving, maintaining, gathering, and archiving digital materials. It plays
an important role in preserving digital content for current and future use. Evidence
have shown that data remains valuable and reusable with proper implementation
of strategies for promoting security and integrity of the data (Jeffery, 2020; Erkimbaev
et al, 2019). Various issues have been noted to have pose threats to effective
data curation, hindering the current as well as future use.
Firstly, unauthorised access to content is one of the threats
to curation of data of digital materials. It is essential to ensure that data repositories
are well secure from unauthorised access (Lee & Stivilia, 2017). Unauthorised users may tamper with digital materials,
delete content and misusing the data, resulting in the loss of the integrity as
well as authenticity of the digital content.
The second threat is technological obsolesce (Dallas,
2016). Information and
communication technology keep changing. This means, the software and hardwires
that may be usable today, tomorrow may not be usable. Some storage
infrastructures may become obsolete, when software and hardware updates are
made. If the technology as well as software used in managing data remains not
updated, the data may become unusable.
The other threat, is the malware, viruses as well as ransomware.
These may may attack the content resulting
in
permanent data loss. The viruses may attack the documents, resulting in having
corrupt file. These may hinder
the use or reuse of the data.
Natural disasters further pose threat to data curation
and preservation (Dallas, 2016). Servers, hosting repositories may be destroyed by
lightening, fire, floods and other disasters. Other disasters could be human made disasters through poor management of data which may result in erasing the data, leakages of content and others. This suggests the need for
creating backup strategies for enhancing security of the data
The third thereat to digital content is the lack of well-trained
personnel involved in data management. Data management requires vas expertise as
well as skills that would enable the proper preservation as well as management of
the content (Dallas, 2016). The personnel involved in managing data needs to have expertise in
metadata assignment, implementing digital security management strategies, and other
issues. Additionally, the personnel require a deeper understanding of the principles,
protocol and guidelines for data management, to ensure that digital content if
preserved in line with the stipulated standards.
References
Dallas, C. (2016). Digital curation beyond
the “wild frontier”: A pragmatic approach. Archival Science, 16(4),
421-457.
Erkimbaev, A. O., Zitserman, V. Y.,
Kobzev, G. A., & Kosinov, A. V. (2019). Curation of digital scientific
data. Scientific and Technical Information Processing, 46(3),
192-203.
Jeffery, K. (2020). Data Curation and
Preservation. In Towards Interoperable Research Infrastructures for
Environmental and Earth Sciences: A Reference Model Guided Approach for Common
Challenges (pp. 123-139). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Lee, D. J., & Stvilia, B. (2017).
Practices of research data curation in institutional repositories: A
qualitative view from repository staff. PloS one, 12(3),
e0173987.
Good work Jim
ReplyDeleteVery insightful and clear . Thank you for sharing
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