A rapid change in technology has a great impact on the long-term access to digital content. This makes preservation of a digital content a challenging task due to the content’s inherent dependency on a specific hardware/software platform. Changes in the technology without backward compatibility can lead to a content that can’t be viewed and qualitative data is no exception. Normalization is a commonly used strategy to keep content prepared for long-term preservation. However, tools are not always available to perform normalization on complex file formats such as qualitative data analysis software files. In this work, we are proposing a data model to normalize computer assisted qualitative data analysis software files to support long term access.

digital preservation, digital curation, iPRES, Chapel Hill

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Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Digital Preservation

School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill