Physical Object Preservation Challenges and Opportunities Part 1 - Do digital standards and practices work for physical objects?

During this two-part breakout session, we will discuss the major challenges and obstacles to physical object preservation (both legacy data and newly collected data). Some of these issues include media degradation, lack of resources, and lack of training and/or standards. The goal will be to discuss ways in which ESIP is already providing opportunities for better preservation and ways in which ESIP can further enhance its role in this process. This is meant to be highly interactive, so come with your ideas!

In Part 1, we will look at current standards and practices. How well do currently developed standards and practices for digital data apply to physical objects and collections? This session will present a preliminary evaluation of the current Data Stewardship Principles and Provenance and Context Content Standards recommendations with respect to physical object and related data stewardship.

We plan to conclude these sessions with a discussion of how what steps might be taken to incorporate issues of physical object and related data into the current ESIP recommendations, as well as what next steps are needed in examining data collection structure to make better recommendations for curation and archival practices relating to cyberinfrastructure needs.