Survey of Digital Preservation Practices in Canada: Final Report

Library and Archives Canada has released Survey of Digital Preservation Practices in Canada: Final Report.

Here's an excerpt:

In 2008, Library and Archives Canada commissioned a survey on digital preservation practices in Canada in order to gain a clearer understanding of the current state. The intent was to determine existing practices and resources for digital preservation as well as to identify gaps and challenges. This report presents the results of this survey. . . .

The survey was divided into six sections: (1) Introduction, (2) Information about the repository, (3) General policies and practices, (4) Preservation practices, (5) Preservation resources, and (6) Challenges. Respondents who rated their organization's preservation capacity as very low were re-routed to an abridged version of the questionnaire.

The survey received 61 full responses from a variety of types of organizations: libraries, archives government departments/agencies, museums, research institutes, across a number of sectors: academic, governments and not-for profit. Although invitations were sent to several organizations in private industry, no responses were received from this sector.

Respondents' repository collections ranged from discrete collections of digitized monographs, images, or audio files, to data repositories, to broader scope, multiple format collections. The repository collections were also wide ranging in terms of size with the smallest collection having 70 objects and the largest collection containing over 8 million objects. 95% of respondents indicated that the content in the repositories was predominantly Canadian. That is, the content was produced in Canada or was about Canada.