By Laura Molloy, CODATA Research Lead
With rising threats to the existence of essential data resources, and mendacious contesting of the historical record, the current moment clearly demonstrates the critical role of high-quality digital preservation practitioners, skills and services. Digital preservation is a complex and diverse profession, often underfunded and sometimes misunderstood. It is important that we understand the current digital preservation landscape as well as possible, in order to support those working around the world in the preservation professions and to provide project outputs that will be of relevance and value to them. Accordingly, CODATA is delighted to be a participant in the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) project, ‘Enhancing Digital preservation strategies at European and National level’ (EDEN).
EDEN has published the results of a survey which was recently conducted to gather information from the digital preservation community worldwide. Our survey was specifically about the guidance to which preservation practitioners refer, and practices they use, when identifying, selecting, and appraising digital data objects for ‘long-term’ preservation.
This blog post provides an informal overview of how we went about the survey, and what we discovered. We hope this will be of interest to those working in contemporary digital preservation, including managers, practitioners, and those responsible for policy making and training within memory organisations. If you would like further detail on any aspect of this work, the full report can be downloaded at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17984753.
About the EOSC EDEN project
The EOSC EDEN project, funded by the European Commission [1], seeks to enhance digital preservation strategies at European and national levels. The project is creating a framework to identify what data are candidates for digital preservation. This involves setting standards and protocols for long-term data preservation, which will be determined through an assessment of data usage, quality, and the data’s benefits to science and society.
In addition to the framework, the EOSC EDEN project aims to develop a model for re-appraisal of data throughout its lifecycle. The model for re-appraisal will support the framework for digital preservation by ensuring that preservation efforts remain relevant over time.
The survey activity was led by Laura Molloy, CODATA research lead, who is leading EDEN Task 1.1, ‘Landscape analysis of existing frameworks, guidelines and practices for identification, selection and appraisal of data for long-term preservation’. This task contributes the majority of the landscaping activity in the project. Laura is a qualitative social science researcher by training, with experience in a number of digital preservation projects and initiatives, and has a track record in research and consultancy relating to digital decision-making and information behaviours in varied professional settings. Analytical power was added by other members of the EDEN task team, including work package leader and digital preservation expert Micky Lindlar, and quantitive analyst Maria Benauer, both of Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB).
Read the full blog post here: https://codata.org/blog/2026/03/10/digital-preservation-eosc-eden-project-reports-survey-findings/