Defining Digital Sustainability

This paper investigates what is meant by digital sustainability and establishes that it encompasses a range of issues and concerns that contribute to the longevity of digital information. A significant and integral part of digital sustainability is digital preservation, which has focused on one technical concern after another as issues and fashions have shifted over the last twenty years. Digital sustainability is demonstrated as providing an appropriate context for digital preservation because it requires consideration of the overall life cycle, technical, and socio-technical issues associated with the creation and management of digital items.