Services

Digital Preservation Services

Digital preservation refers to the reliable preservation of digital information in an intact, authentic, and usable state for decades or even centuries. Digital preservation is an active activity where the life cycle extends beyond the lifespan of any individual technological components. For example, hardware, software, and file formats become obsolete and change, while the content must remain usable.

The National Digital Preservation Services (DPS) in Finland are primarily offered to organizations operating under the Ministry of Education and Culture, responsible for preserving intellectual and material cultural heritage (archives, libraries, museums), or responsible for research (higher education and other research organizations).

Joining and participating in the service do not incur direct financial costs for organizations, but they do require personnel resources for the implementation and use of the service. However, the DPS's support organizations throughout all stages of usage. As the environment and technology evolve, various preservation actions can be performed on the data to ensure its integrity, quality, readability, and usability over the long term. Such actions include converting outdated file formats, making copies of the data on multiple storage platforms in different locations, and recovering damaged storage copies.

Joining the Service

Joining the service requires approval from the Ministry of Education and Culture. A service contract is formed between each partner organization and CSC for the use of the DPS. Organizations are additionally required to go through the deployment process with the DPS and adhere to the specifications for packaging and transferring data to the service.

The DPS provides support to users throughout the entire preparation, packaging, and submission process, as well as for any questions related to the service. Support requests can be sent to pas-support@csc.fi.