How Clean is Your Software? The Role of Software Validation in Digital Preservation Research Projects: Paper - iPRES 2011 - Singapore

The emphasis during the last three EC Framework Programs on Digital Preservation (DP) has enhanced our understanding of the boundaries of the problem, produced new methods, and supported the construction of preservation tools. In the case of methods and tools, measuring their suitability has emerged as a focus of research. What evidence does the DP community have that the digital preservation tools perform the functions they are supposed to and that they align with original specifications? This paper summarizes the efforts of the Sustaining Heritage Access through Multivalent ArchiviNg (SHAMAN) project to create and implement software validation as a means to gauge the fitness-for-purpose of software outputs. The paper concludes by demonstrating the applicability of the validation approach to preservation projects in general