A clear set of standards and good practices needs to be developed in order to reduce the costs associated with maintaining viable long-term access to a resource. Costs of emulation or migration will increase if resources are generated in proprietary or platform dependent formats.

These guidelines need to be easily understood and promoted as a minimum requirement in order to:

• ensure that digital material can be migrated across platforms with minimum content loss (e.g. standard file formats, compression and encoding).

• ensure that digital resources can be transferred between individuals, business units and partnerships. (e.g. filing naming protocols, access to MFOs location library).

• ensure that digital resources suit the purposes for which they are created. (e.g. access by schools)

• ensure that digital resources can be re-used or re-purposed to suit Cinemedia programs. (e.g. survey exhibitions)

• ensure that appropriate copyright control and access conditions are maintained.

• Information about a resource's provenance, contents, structure, and about the terms and conditions attached to its subsequent management and use (e.g. source, description, rights)

• Information which will facilitate resource discovery (e.g. title, URL, keywords)

• Information which will permit access to, or ordering of, the resource (e.g. terms and conditions - restrictions)

• Information concerning resource management (e.g. format, last update)

• Information about the relationship of digital resources to other resources when they form part of, or are intended to form part of , larger collections. (e.g. index, related interest, PAVE material)

• Information which facilitates communication between creators and managers.(e.g. emails and contact names)

Digital Preservation Strategies

As an evolving medium for the distribution of digital work, the World Wide Web may prove flexible enough to carry digital content into the future. A migration strategy pushes the problem of hardware obsolescence to a single point at the server level where backward compatibility and incremental upgrade is the norm. For this reason the strategy of keeping digital material on-line is proving to be an effective preservation strategy for digital resources. The management of these resources relies on their platform independence and the quality of metadata.

Migration policy will need to be reviewed in the event of a major change in technology or encoding development. Good practice should recognise that simplicity and platform independence is the most appropriate strategy in order to protect against backward incompatibility (See section 2).

4.4 Remote resources

Collections may be created, extended or enhanced by licensing, copying or mirroring existing digital resources created by others. Responsibility for management of these resources needs to be clearly defined.

Evolving or dynamic works may require a different set of agreements which involve rights over periodic captures of the resource or `remotely managed' according to an agreed set of guidelines.

Internally generated and remote evolving or dynamic works will require some form of FTP access in order to update files. A set of Protocols for the granting of access, needs to be developed in order to ensure that other material is not vulnerable to accidental corruption or deletion (See section 5).

4.3 Proprietary Products

Migration is a costly or inappropriate strategy for the following kinds of resources:

• Those for which the hardware/platform contributes makes an essential contribution to the resource's meaning and/or to the experience of its use (e.g. video games, game boys);

• Those where data are stored in un-documented proprietary formats or proprietary information systems which store data in undocumented binary formats (e.g. proprietary data bases - VR products, Lotus Notes).

• Those where data are stored in un-documented formats and bundled with access software which is also undocumented (e.g. commercial CD-ROM products).

• To maintain working examples of technically obsolete machines in order to run these resources (e.g. play stations, DOS computers).

• To maintain working copies of fully licensed third party software with the work (and hardware to run it) (e.g. Microsoft `Word').

There will need to be several levels of storage architecture. Most digital resources will be accessed through the servers. However, some resources, such as high-quality master copies of films or video may need to be kept separate from lower quality distribution resources which take up less bandwidth.

Remote digital resources may require management agreements which involve a program of regular capture or cache. Remote dynamic resources will also require an agreement concerning minimum standards for data encoding and delivery (see section 2).

Back up snapshots of Cinemedia's digital environment on contemporary storage media have a role to play but should not be seen as providing a disaster proof strategy or durable means of preservation.

A disaster strategy needs to be developed which will protect Cinemedia from minimal data loss by offering:

• Protection against server failure through a regular back up and archiving program.

• Protection against any natural or man-made disaster on-site by a regular back up and archiving program off-site (e.g. fire, flood).

• Protection against unauthorised invasion and corruption of data through malice. (e.g. hackers)

• Protection against unauthorised intrusion and corruption of data through accident. (e.g. secure layers of access to the server)

• Protection against technological obsolescence through a regular program of reviews and integrity checking of archived media.

• Those business units which are more dependent on storage media should investigate whether the data preservation functions they require may be most cost effectively out sourced to a specialist computing service, data bank, or other organisation. (e.g. Cinemedia Access Collection).

Using Digital Resources

• relating to the general licencing terms of digital resources.

• relating to the access and display of culturally sensitive or culturally restricted material (e.g. Aboriginal protocols).

• relating to the access and display of pornographic or other material generally regarded as unsuitable for children (e.g. use of filtering architectures such as PICS).

• relating to the re-use and re-purposing of digital resources (e.g. thematic exhibitions).

• relating to the electronic payment for access to digital resources.

• relating to digital resources which are live or built on the fly. Such resources may contain copyright protected content.

Training and Research

The integration, development and implementation of these policies will require that all staff at Cinemedia are web literate to the minimum level that they can follow `good practice' at the point of creation of digital material. A staff training policy and program will need to be developed which systematically identifies:

• the need to recognise what digtial resources are and what their responsibilies are in relation to these resources.

• the on-going training needs of each Business Unit.

• opportunities which exist for internal workshops and exchange of ideas.

• opportunities which exist for the support of research which might assist in the integration of Cinemedia's Access Collection with its On-line Screen Gallery.

• opportunities which exist for the support of research which might assist in the display and accessibilities of screen based digital resources.