Digital preservation offers the economic and social benefits associated with the long-term preservation of information, knowledge and know-how for re-use by later generations. However, digital preservation has a great problem, namely that preservation support structures are built on projects which are short lived and is fragmented. The unique feature of APARSEN is that it is building on the already established Alliance for Permanent Access (APA), a membership organisation of major European stakeholders in digital data and digital preservation.

These stakeholders have come together to create a shared vision and framework for a sustainable digital information infrastructure providing permanent access to digitally encoded information. To this self-sustaining grouping the main objective of APARSEN was to bring a wide range of other experts in digital preservation including academic and commercial researchers, as well as researchers in other cross-European organisations. The members of the APA and other members of the consortium already undertook research in digital preservation individually but even there the effort was fragmented despite smaller groupings of these organisations working together in specific EU and national projects. APARSEN helped to combine and integrate these programmes into a shared programme of work, by creating the pre-eminent virtual research centre in digital preservation in Europe, if not the World. The APA provided a natural basis for a longer term consolidation of digital preservation research and expertise.

The Joint Programme of Activity coverED

• technical methods for preservation, access and most importantly re-use of data holdings over the whole lifecycle;
• legal and economic issues including costs and governance issues as well as digital rights
• outreach within and outside the consortium to help to create a discipline of data curators with appropriate qualifications

APARSEN project leaflet