Introduction to Long-Term Preservation

As of 2024, the long-term preservation of DSE remains an only partially and, in some respects, unsatisfactorily solved challenge. This chapter, therefore, can only discuss standard solutions to a limited extent and often serves more as a guide to the direction in which technical developments for long-term preservation are currently heading, the solutions we can expect from these developments, and the limitations or planning steps they involve.

In principle, the topic of long-term preservation can be divided into two aspects, as done in the following sub-chapters. This distinction, which in some cases allows for fluid transitions, is introduced here.

1. Long-Term Preservation of the Presentation

Long-term preservation of the presentation means ensuring that the front end remains accessible in the long term. This is a goal of many DSE projects, some of which invest significant resources in the design and functionality of their front ends, even when using technically standard solutions like the TEI Publisher. Projects view the presentation as an integral part of the publication and often describe it in analogy to a printed book (which, so far, far exceeds the longevity of DSE front ends).

However, many projects lack the infrastructure necessary to maintain dynamic web applications (such as those generated by the TEI Publisher up to version 9) in the long term. By dynamic web applications, we mean programs that generate the desired display each time a website is accessed or a search is performed, with the help of a database. Project durations are typically limited to a few years, and few funds are allocated for the long-term maintenance of a dynamic web application beyond the project's duration. Normally, project funds for long-term preservation are allocated solely for the archiving of data records (see below). These funds are thus tied to external institutions for digital archiving (for example, in Switzerland, to DaSCH).

Research and memory institutions, on the other hand, do not consider the long-term preservation of dynamic web applications as a core task, as this would entail technical uncertainties and financial risks. To our knowledge, no institution in the German-speaking world currently offers an official guarantee for the long-term maintenance of DSE web applications, although some have, in practice, already maintained them for extended periods.

The solution to this challenge discussed in the subchapter is the generation of static_presentations of DSE, which are currently being (further) developed in various project contexts. They differ from dynamic web applications in that most views are pre-generated, meaning no additional programs or databases are required in the background. However, solutions are also possible where certain dynamic features are retained and, if maintenance becomes impossible, can be disabled without losing the static functionalities.

2 Archiving the Data

At the core of data archiving is ensuring the long-term accessibility of the edition's data. This can include a generic presentation of the data. However, the primary focus is on the long-term accessibility of the data itself, including its findability and comprehensibility. Informative documentation and well-structured TEI/XML data are, therefore, prerequisites for any form of data archiving. The long-term preservation of presentation interfaces, however, has entirely different requirements and is therefore separate from data archiving.

In addition to archiving complete datasets of DSEs, the archiving of different data types for various types of use is key. These types of use typically differ from the reading and philological or hermeneutic analysis of the text corpus facilitated by the front end. Instead, the text is understood as a data source for, for example, distant reading, computational linguistics methods, or data visualizations.