CHALLENGES OF DIGITAL PRESERVATION IN FEDERAL UNIVE RSITY LIBRARIES IN NORTH WESTERN STATES OF NIGERIA By
This paper investigates the challenges militating a gainst successful preservation of digital informati on resources in federal university libraries in North Western State s of Nigeria. Qualitative research method was adop ted, purposive sampling was adopted for the study; the instruments used to collect data were the interview and observ ation. The responses were analyzed descriptively. The study re veal d that the predominant challenges militating a gainst successful preservation of digital information reso urces were lack of digital preservation policy ina dequate power supply, unskilled professionals, technological obso le cence, poor maintenance culture, technophobia, s torage media degradation, inadequate funding, changes in technol ogy and inadequate infrastructure. The paper recomm ended that digital preservation policy, standby generators and inverters need to be provided, adequate profession al need to be employed, file formats need to be emulated and stor age media needs to be refreshed. Introduction The emergence of information and communication technology has revolutionized the way information resources are preserved in libraries and informatio n centers. It has greatly enhanced information accessibility, saves time, and reduce costs. Institutions are not only able to store large amoun t of information but also quickly access and retrieve la rge volume of information remotely. Information and communication technology has enabled librarians to carry out their mandate of information capture, storages, preservation and dissemination. Today the re is ever increasing flood of resources created and generated. Considering the speed at which they are created their management becomes a challenge for most institutions particularly in the area of handl i g access and retrieval and use for the purpose of decision making. Digital preservation can be seen as the set of processes and activities that ensure continued acce ss to information. This assertion is supported by Gbaj e (2011) who stated that, digital preservation refer s to series of managerial activities designed to ensure continuing access to resources in digital formats for as long as possible and to protect them from media failure, physical loss and obsolescence. The information resources in the library are in the print and non print format: Information in the prin t format include books, maps, theses, journals, conference papers, handbooks, dictionaries e.t.c while at the other hand, information in the non pri nt format includes online databases, E books, ejour nal and those on the website and other digital storage media. Tammaro (2006) stated that digital information resources include online databases and ejournals. Therefore digital resources are informati on that can be accessed via a computer network. Without an effective digital preservation of information resources in libraries, access via digi tal devices will produce little or no resources for teaching, learning and research. Therefore, the rationale behind the research is to identify the challenges militating against successful preservati on of digital information resources in order to proffe r solutions to them. Statement of the Problem Federal university libraries in the North Western states of Nigeria are acidulously converting their information resources from hard copy to soft copy. Despite the use of ICTs in preserving information t he libraries are faced with a lot of challenges that d o not allow the successful digital preservation which lea ds to the loss of valuable data and prone to deteriora tion of information resources and media failure. Therefore, this paper is set out to investigate the challenges militating against successful preservati on of digital information resources. Objectives of the study This study has the following questions; 1. To identify the challenge militating against successful preservation of digital information resources in Federal University Librarian in Northwest States of Nigeria. 2. To proffer solutions to the challenges of preservation of digital information resources in Federal Universities in Northwest States of Nigeria. Literature Review Digital The Information Manager Vol. 15(1&2) Page 18 preservation is the series of management, policies and activities necessary to ensure the enduring usability, authenticity, discoverability and access ing of contents over long term, while digital preservat ion strategies are seen as those activities such as use of standard, normalization, refreshing, migration, emulation e.t.c carried out to ensure continued acc ess to information resources for as long as possible (Rahaman and Muhammed 2012) Several studies have reported numerous challenges related to digita l preservation across the globe. Frequent power outage constitute serious delay to digital preservation activities, Zulu (2008) report ed that inadequate supply of electricity makes it impossible to maintain a conducive and sustainable technological environment. In addition, Anyaogu (2014) stated that standby generators, inverters an d solar systems should be provided to support power supply and overcome the problem of inadequate power supply in digital preservation. Brenda and Ifeanyi (2011) stated that libraries are faced with the challenges of inadequate and qualifi ed professionals who are not fully equipped and qualified to train and retrain others on digital preservation. Many library and archives staff does not have the required training and I.C.T skills nee ded to carry out this important work. With human action s come human error, however, many libraries and archives staff does not have the required training a d skills. The professional skills needed include technical proficiency in areas such as metadata schema coding, and authentication (Sanett, 2013) Information Records Management Trust (IRMT) (2009) suggested that the librarians and archivist should undergo a training programme that would include both the operating environmental control an d storage. Quickly changing digital technologies are one of th e most serious challenges associated with digital preservation. Because there is no way of knowing what formats or procedures people will be using 50 or 100 years from now, it is more important to focu s on a shorter time frame. If professionals focus on the coming five, ten or even twenty years, they are mor e likely to have a better idea of what the practices will be (Gladney, 2009) Gbaje (2011) also stated that the continuous change s in computer hardware and software cause technological obsolescence that is a threat to digi tal preservation. It causes the loss to the means of accessing information in digital form and to tackl e the problem of changes in technology digital information resource needs to be migrated from one platform or format to another due to the constant changes in technology hardware and software so as t meet up with the current changes and upgrades.Gbaje (2011) Kol Oltmans (2005) asserted that the purpose of migration is to preserve the integrity o f digital objects and to retain the ability for clien ts to retrieve, display, and otherwise use them in the fa c of constantly changing technology. With migration, file formats will be converted into new formats as soon as the original formats run the risk of becomi ng obsolete. Another serious challenge facing digital preservati on is technological obsolesce which is caused by continuous upgrade of operating system, programming language application and storage media due to commercial interest the devices, software an d formats used to store information are often designe d for obsolescence. In other words, corporations that design these hardware and software design them with a shelf life in order to ensure the sales of latest upgrades and models (Reyes, 2013) Moghaddam (2012) stated that emulator should be used to recre ate the functionality of obsolete technical environment s on modern computer platforms. Many traditional librarians and archivists are conservatives and have phobia for computers because of generation gaps between the new and old professionals, the old professionals' sees computer as a threat to them and their status as experts. Thus, t ey find it difficult to cope or meet up with the requirements of the digital age and are at the same time too reluctant to leave the old practices for n ew one. Ayoku (2008) stated that Successful applicatio n of information handling technologies in libraries requires an ability to overcome staff and personal resistance to innovation .Therefore they should be educated on the importance and need of meeting up with the digital age and how it will make their wor k easy, effective and efficient. Katun (2006) observed that digital resources storag e media has a shorter life span than paper, while a paper record is said to last for 200years, digital media is said to start deteriorating after the first 5yea rs. There by making digital information available for longer periods becomes a problem. This leads to situations where libraries are left with deteriorat ed or outdated storage media, to this storage media needs to be refreshed when it begins to get old. MIT (200 5) asserted that refreshing is the periodically moving of files from one physical storage medium to another i n order to avoid degradation of the storage medium. The Information Manager Vol. 15(1&2) Page 19 Anyaogu (2014) stated that inadequate funding remains a crippling problem in most libraries and t he cost of making new purchases of digital technology devices for digital preservation and it maintenance is another drawback for most libraries struggling to s tay within budget allocations. Digital preservation an d digitization of archives and libraries is expensive and it requires enormous funding due to frequent hardware and software upgrades Mutula and Ojedokun 2008) Therefore, adequate fund should be provided in order to assure new and improved services and susta