Preserving digitally encoded information which is not just to be rendered, as a document, but which must processed, like data, is even harder than one might think, because understandability of the information which is encoded in the digital object(s) is what is required. Information about Nuclear Waste will include both documents as well as data. Moreover one must be able to understand the relationship between the many individual pieces of information. Furthermore the volume of information involved will require us to allow automated processing of such information.Preserving the ability to understand and process digitally encoded information over long periods of time is especially hard when so many things will change, including hardware, software, environment and the tacit and implicit knowledge that people have. Since we cannot predict these changes this cannot be just a one-off action; continued effort is required. However it seems reasonable to say that no organization, project or person can ever say for certain that their ability to provide this effort is going to last forever. What can be done? Can anything be guaranteed? Probably not guaranteed - but at least one can try to reduce the risk of losing the information.We argue that if no single organization, project or person can guarantee funding or effort (or even interest), then somehow we must share the "preservation load", and this is more than a simple chain of preservation consisting of handing on the collection of bits from one holder to the next. Clearly the bits must be passed on (but may be transformed along the way), however something more is required - because of the need to maintain understandability, not just access. This paper describes the tools, techniques and infrastructure components which the CASPAR project is producing to help in sharing the preservation burden.
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