Preservación de documentos digitales: el caso de Wikimedia México / Preservation of digital records: the case of Wikimedia Mexico

Mexican NGOs work on a wide variety of social problems related to technology, gender, violence, and support for social causes. However, their information and history, produced and disseminated in digital formats, are at risk because the organizations lack adequate digital preservation strategies to ensure the permanence and access of their information in the long term, which is aggravated by problems such as the digital divide or lack of budget. Therefore, Wikimedia Mexico, an NGO that promotes Free Culture, is taken as an example to establish digital preservation strategies according to its characteristics and context. In this way, it is possible to recognize their needs regarding digital preservation, identify and classify their documents through a digital preservation scheme, which will help ensure the permanence of their information in the long term, and thus access to the history and memory of the organization and Free Culture in Mexico.

The main goal of this work has been to establish digital preservation strategies for Mexican NGOs, taking Wikimedia Mexico as a case study, through specific objectives such as:

• recognizing the characteristics and needs of Mexican NGOs in terms of digital preservation;

• identifying and classifying digital documents, their characteristics and the challenges they face for their preservation;

• and designing a digital preservation scheme for Wikimedia Mexico that can be a guide for Mexican NGOs.

The methodology used was to undertake:

1. Review of academic literature on digital preservation and archives of non-governmental organizations

2. Theoretical analysis of archival processes, identification of Wikimedia Mexico documents and their characteristics, using as a guide the “The Global 'Bit List' of Endangered Digital Species” of the Digital Preservation Coalition.

3. Interviews with key people from Wikimedia México about knowledge, experiences, needs and expectations about digital preservation.

NGOs often work in collaboration with governments and universities to generate research on various social issues and help vulnerable sectors. For this reason, it has unique information that is vulnerable and in danger of extinction, so its loss would generate a loss of its memory and history, of the work carried out and of access to its information.