ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the nuts and bolts of ensuring that oral history collections are preserved for future generations. Digital preservation is a complicated issue, but it is worth emphasizing yet again that the first step for ensuring the survival of digital files is redundancy, and storage in geographically diverse locations! Digital files are inherently fragile and without proper upkeep and maintenance access may not be possible. Digital files do degrade and computers do crash, so monitoring, and a strategy for migration will be critical over the long term. Investing in digital preservation requires a serious commitment on the part of an institution and should not be taken lightly. It is not just an investment on the part of the oral history archives, library or program, but also the university's Information Management, IT or Systems department. Digital preservation, however, is essential if these valuable resources are to be available to inform later generations of scholars, students and the general public.
