Why reinvent the wheel for FAIR? A blog-post from Barbara Sierman

“The current discussions around FAIR (stands for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) datasets are raising a lot of confusion. It occurs to me, that the current discussions about FAIR in different forums often seem to freshly start inventing solutions for digital preservation, by describing the problem but not calling it a digital preservation issue. Digital preservation exists already for more than 20 years. For lots of problems there are already solutions. No need to freshly start wondering how to cope with keeping FAIR data findable, accessible, interoperable and re-usable over the years: this is daily work for digital preservationists.  The explicit exclusion of digital preservation in the EU report “Turning FAIR into reality” was a clear statement but is not helpful in solving the range of problems. FAIR should be connected with OAIS and digital preservation in general. We all would benefit from a better interaction between FAIR and digital preservation.”

Barbara Sierman, chair of the Open Preservation Foundation Board and Digital Preservation consultant at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), works as an advisor on various topics related to the preservation and long-term accessibility of digital collections: from organizational and procedural aspects, to preservation policies and certification. She is active in national and international initiatives.

Read her full article: https://digitalpreservation.nl/seeds/why-reinventing-the-wheel-for-fair/