Is the Future of Preservation Cloudy? (Dagstuhl Seminar 12472)

Abstract

This report documents the program and the outcomes of Dagstuhl Seminar 12472 "Is the Future of Preservation Cloudy?". Our seminar was composed of a series of panels structured as a series of brief presentations followed by an open discussion. The seminar started with a session introducing key concepts and definitions and illuminating the vast array of perspectives from which attendees were addressing issues of cloud and preservation. We them proceeded 
into a discussion of requirements from different types of communities and a subsequent discussion on how to protect the data and ensure its integrity and reliability. We next considered issues related to cloud infrastructure, in particular related to management of the bits and logical obsolescence. We also considered the economics of preservation and the ability to reuse knowledge. In
addition to these pre-planned panels, we had three breakout sessions that were identified by the participants: automated appraisal, design for forgetting, and PaaS/SaaS for data preservation. After the executive summary, we present summaries of the panels and reports on the breakout sessions, followed by
brief abstracts from a majority of the seminar participants describing the material they presented in the panels.