Digital materials are vulnerable to a number of different kinds of failures, including decay of the digital media, loss due to hackers and viruses, accidental deletions, natural disasters, and bankruptcy of the institution holding the collection. Digital archives can best survive failures if they have made several copies of their collections at…

This report is intended to inform and stimulate discussion on digital library programs as well as the potential usefulness, scope, and desired features of future inventories of online digital collections. It describes a joint project by the Commission on Preservation and Access and the Council on Library Resources to determine the extent to which…