One more year we join the Digital Preservation Coalition’s initiative to celebrate the World Digital Preservation Day. This year the central theme to reflect on is “Digital Preservation: A Concerted Effort”.
At LIBNOVA we firmly believe that a successful digital preservation project is the result of a joint effort between the institution and the provider, which is why we have always advocated a project approach based on cooperation, with the needs of our customers as the driving force for innovation and by engaging in collaborative research projects. But, what does this really mean?
Partnership approach
Taking a digital preservation project forward is more complex than it may initially appear. In addition to being clear about the organization’s needs and finding the digital preservation tool that best meets those needs, it is necessary to have the support of the organization at the executive level in terms of commitment, budget, and implementation time, as well as the stakeholders that will be involved.
LIBNOVA has always strived to facilitate this work, so since our inception our approach to projects has been siding with the customer from even before starting a project, being one more of his team, solving the problems that arise jointly, whether technical or bureaucratic, and learning from them in each implementation to continuously improve.
Customer-driven innovation
Historically, one of the biggest challenges for LIBNOVA has been to break down digital preservation technology barriers and reduce the complexity of preservation systems by making them easy to use and, following good digital preservation practices, to achieve the highest level of digital preservation (NSDA 4/4) with a basic knowledge of digital preservation and a low learning curve.
To achieve this, the needs of our customers, and therefore of the digital preservation community, have always been at the forefront of our minds. Our main goal is that the preservation system allows them to do more with less and in a simple way, so we are constantly optimizing processes and we are more than open to make integrations with other platforms in the digital preservation ecosystem and incorporate functionalities to facilitate the day-to-day work of the information professionals.
Collaborative research projects
Frequently, the answers to a problem can be found in the community. In many occasions, our customers face similar challenges among them and, although for some of them they are new, others have already gone through them, so individual experiences sometimes meet collective needs.
However, sometimes the challenges that arise are new to the community, or require new approaches. This constant search for new solutions led LIBNOVA, in 2017, to materialize its commitment to R&D in a new department that manages the company’s lines of research and technological innovation: LIBNOVA Labs. Its commitment to research and development has led LIBNOVA to be recognized with the Innovative SME Seal by the Spanish Government, to participate in international research projects, and to appear on the map of Artificial Intelligence.
ARCHIVER Project has been one of the most relevant research projects in which we have participated. Its challenge was to find a solution for the need of preserving research datasets on a Petabyte scale, driven by cutting edge research institutions worldwide led by CERN. LIBNOVA created an international public-private collaborative consortium with experts in digital preservation, data privacy, infrastructure and cybersecurity, and whose work, in addition to winning the competitive process, resulted in a new product line focused on digital preservation and research data management, and has had a direct impact on streamlining and refining our complete digital preservation platform.
All these progress and innovations in favor of information security and with the customer’s needs at the center, have pushed LIBNOVA to have a strong presence in the academic, cultural and research sector in more than 20 countries in the 5 continents. Great examples are the British Library, the National Library of Spain, the University of Oxford, HILA Stanford University, BAYER, the American University in Cairo (Egypt), the University of Amsterdam, the United States Holocaust Museum (USHMM) in Washington or the Temasek Polytechnic in Singapore, which have trusted in the LIBNOVA digital preservation solutions.
