The newspaper El Mundo, one of the most important newspapers in Spain, has published a report on digital preservation in its Economic News pages in which echoes the work and experience of LIBNOVA.
Read it in Spanish here, or in English below:
Preserving (digital) memory forever?
Technology advances exponentially, but the information that is generated does not advance at the same pace and may no longer be accessible. Fortunately, there is now a solution.
Who has never had the experience of looking for a digital photograph or a family video and not finding it? Or finding the CD, DVD, hard disk, or USB memory where the file is and not being able to see it because the file has been corrupted, or it is not read, or the current computer does not even have a CD reader?
What if instead of a personal file we were talking about the Memory Archive of a whole country, the data of a scientific study on a new drug, or all the digital information of a company?
When digital information has to be stored and used for more than 10 years, new challenges arise that the usual technology does not solve: media degrade, formats become obsolete and, due to their large volume, files and their information are not systematically verified and cataloged for preservation, so we find unexpected errors.
Culture and science in safekeeping
Traditional media (backup, DVD, disconnected disks, or large servers) are not optimal for ensuring the long-term usability of digital information. This calls for a new approach: digital preservation. According to UNESCO, it consists of “all the processes aimed at ensuring the continuity of digital heritage materials for as long as they are needed.” To guarantee this continuity, it must be ensured that these objects will be accessible in the future, both in the short and long term, regardless of the medium on which they are stored, the software with which they were created, and technological changes. The authenticity of the information must also be guaranteed, protecting the integrity and identity of the data, certifying that the information has not undergone any change over time.
And this is precisely LIBNOVA’s mission: to safeguard the world’s cultural and scientific heritage. Forever.
The company, founded in Spain in 2009, currently has offices in the United States and Europe, allowing it to operate worldwide. Even with the great expansion it has experienced in recent years, it continues to stand out for its close relationship with clients, becoming part of the teams it works with. This collaborative relationship has allowed it to expand the capabilities of its digital preservation platform and push the boundaries of what is possible in this industry, bringing innovations that enable organizations to preserve their valuable content more easily and efficiently. “Working side-by-side with our customers has allowed us to learn first-hand about their needs and find solutions to make technology the perfect preservation partner. Customers are the ones who guide the changes and new functionalities of our products. Some customers start from scratch, while others are looking to migrate their data to more modern and trustworthy systems,” comments Antonio G. Martinez, CEO of LIBNOVA. “The Digital Preservation Community is a very active and highly interconnected working group. This closeness and proactive team approach makes our customers recommend us in their work environment, which is the best promotion,” adds María Fuertes, Head of Marketing.
LIBNOVA offers its customers the highest levels of quality and reliability. To prove this, it has been certified in the international standards ISO 9001 for Quality Management and ISO 27001 for Information Security Management, which has recently been complemented with ISO 27017 and ISO 27018, expanding the guarantees in relation to cloud-managed services.
Innovation for data management; security for information.
Constantly searching 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. This commitment to research and development has led LIBNOVA to be recognized with the Innovative SME Seal by the Government of Spain, to participate in both CDTI and international research projects, and to be on the map of Artificial Intelligence. According to Teo Redondo, R&D Director, “research is the cornerstone of our products of tomorrow. It allows us to anticipate the demand and explore the potential applications of digital preservation in other fields beyond cultural and scientific heritage, such as pharmaceuticals or cybersecurity.”
All these advances and innovations in favor of information security have led LIBNOVA to have a strong presence in the academic, cultural, and research sector in the 17 countries where it works with more than 60 organizations. Some good examples are the National Library of Spain, the University of Oxford, HILA Stanford University, the EPFL, the University of Amsterdam, the United States Holocaust Museum (USHMM) in Washington, or the National Archives of Colombia.
However, not only history and humanities entrust the preservation of their information to this company, but also many of the leading scientific powers. The LIBNOVA-led consortium has been selected for the design and implementation of a Petabyte-scale digital preservation solution for preserving research datasets as part of the EU’s ARCHIVER project (€4.8M). This project is driven by CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research and home of the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva), EMBL-EBI (European Molecular Biology Institute), PIC (Port d’Informació Científica – manages research data in the area of astrophysics and cosmology), and DESY (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron – Germany’s electron accelerator), all leading research institutions worldwide.
Likewise, and as part of its R&D, the conclusive results obtained in these research projects have a direct impact on its digital preservation platform. If the major advances in science trust LIBNOVA to safeguard their data, why not those of your organization?
