A White Paper summarising the findings of the Planets (Preservation and Long-term Access through Networked Services) Market Survey is available to download from the Planets website.

The survey of 200 organisations worldwide and conducted by Tessella aimed to understand the requirements for long-term management of digital content. Contributors spanned libraries, archives, government, providers of digital library systems, museums and commercial organisations.

Key Findings

- The volume of digital content organisations expect to archive will increase 25 fold in the next ten years, from a median of less than 20TB to over 500TB.

- Over 80% of organisations already need to preserve content in simple formats, such as documents and images, for the long-term, by 2019, 70% will also need to preserve databases, websites, and audio and video files.

-  Ninety-three per cent of organisations recognise the challenges of preserving digital content for the long-term and many plan for it: 76% include it in their operational planning, 71% in business continuity planning and 62% in financial planning.

-  A digital preservation policy is a vital first step in preserving digital content. Organisations with a policy are more likely to include digital preservation in their operational, financial and business continuity plans, three times more likely to budget for it and four times more likely to be investing in a solution.

National libraries and archives with large volumes of, and variation in types of, digital content, as well as a legal and moral imperative to preserve it, currently lead the way. However, all organisations will face similar challenges as the volume and variety of content they hold rises.

Download the White Paper at: http://www.planets-project.eu/docs/reports/planets-market-survey-white-paper.pdf.

To comment or ask a question, please e-mail : info@planets-project.eu.

You can subscribe to receive e-bulletins from Planets at: www.planets-project.eu/community.