Preservation and Access Framework for Digital Art Objects

Using the interactive born-digital artworks in Cornell's In 2013, Cornell University Library received a 2-year research and development grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to design a framework for preserving access to digital art objects. The Preservation and Access Frameworks for Digital Art Objects project (PAFDAO) was undertaken in collaboration with Cornell University's Society for the Humanities and the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art as a test bed, this 2-year research and development project aims to create a metadata framework that does the following:

• preserve complex digital art objects in a large-scale digital repository 
• provide researchers with the best possible access to them, even when full rendering may be impossible
• document new research into digital preservation methods for future archives and curators.

a collection of media artworks housed in the Library's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections. This collection of complex interactive born-digital artworks is used by students, faculty, and artists from various disciplines. The ultimate aim of the PAFDAO project was to create generalizable new media preservation and access practices that will be applicable for different media environments and institutional types. The project provides a case study in new media preservation that may be informative to library and museum contexts alike.

The Preserving and Emulating Digital Art Objects White Paper  describes the project's findings, discoveries, and challenges. The ultimate goal of the project team has been the creation of a preservation and access practice grounded in thorough and practical understanding of the characteristics of digital objects and their access requirements, seen from the perspectives of collection curators and users alike. Equally important has been the establishment of service frameworks and policies that are sustainable, realistic, and cost-efficient. So all through the project, one of our principles has been moving the experience gained through research into practice. This white paper aims to contribute to better and more practical understanding, management, and curation of digital assets. Although the initiative focused on new media art, we hope that our methodologies and findings will inform other types of complex born-digital collections as wellPreservation & Access Framework for Digital Art Objects will help cultural and educational institutions broaden and sustain community access to an increasingly significant, yet challenging area of our cultural heritage. It will promote interdisciplinary learning, teaching, research, and cultural practice across the fields of art, art history, information science, comparative literature, media culture, visual studies, performing arts, anthropology, and digital humanities.  The preservation model developed will apply not merely to new media artworks, but to other rich digital media environments.