7th November is World Digital Preservation Day. This year’s theme is ‘At-risk digital materials’.
One barrier to adopting a research notebook tool is concern that content will become trapped within the tool and could be lost or rendered inaccessible if the software supplier ceases trading or stops supporting that product. Consequently, when evaluating potential notebook software, users should check that it is possible to export notebook content and save it in a widely-used format which can be opened by other software. Common export formats include pdf, Word or xml.
It is useful to be able to export both whole notebooks and individual pages. Check to see what metadata is included with the exported content and where it is recorded in the new format. For example, if you export a notebook page created using RSpace and save it as a Word file, tags attached to the RSpace page will be recorded in the Word document’s properties. Any metadata added to the RSpace Caption field does not appear to be exported. You may need to consider where you record metadata within your notebook if you want to be able to access it within the exported version of your notebook page.
It is good practice to export notebook content regularly as a form of back-up. Exporting a page as a pdf can also be a way of saving a document as a final version, useful if the notebook tool does not offer the facility to seal pages and prevent further editing and this is a feature which you require.
