Professor of Information Science, Prof. Ezra Shiloba Gbaje has call for the establishment of Nigerian National Centre for Digital Preservation (NNCDP) for monitoring and conduct of researches on digital preservation in Nigeria.
Prof. Gbaje made the call in his Inaugural Lecture titled: “Beyond Digitization: Access and Preservation” which he presented as the 13th in the Federal University Lokoja (FUL) Inaugural Lecture series on Wednesday in Lokoja.
He said there was also the need for a “unified National digital preservation policy and implementation strategies” that would address identified lapses.
The policy, he added was also expected to provide a well-articulated roadmap for digital preservation activities for the National Information Centres and other related efforts in digital preservation in the country.
The Information Science Specialist suggested in his Policy Principle Statement, that the Centre, which is expected to function as a parastatal, would have the mandate and commitment to digital object preservation.
The Center, he added, would ensure that digital objects created and preserved at the Nigerian National Information Centres are available accessible for re-use in the short and long-term
Prof. Gbaje also called for he modification and re-designed of the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) reference model for the preservation of digital objects using appropriate computer hardware and Dspace Open Source Software.
He hinted that the Federal Government of Nigeria over the past two decades had formulated and promoted many initiatives and policies that encourage the use of digital technology in almost every facet of human endeavour.
The aim, according to him, is to ensure that Information Technology resources are readily available to promote efficient national development and provide enabling environment for data protection and data utility.
“I wish to state that to date, no digital preservation policy has been put in place to ensure that the growing digital objects created as a result of a shift to digital information systems are preserved for long-term accessibility and re-use. asserted.
“There must be active intervention to make sure that the digital objects stored in storage media can be located accessed and used over a long term period.
“Digital preservation policies and strategies are crucial parts of managing the risk associated with rapid computer hardware and software obsolescences”, he said
He added that Fake News was now rampant because of improper information preservation procedures saying that when put in proper perspective, systems would begin to reject fake news on their own.
“Fake News have peculiar features. Software are being developed to train the computers to be able to identify fake news on their own. With artificial intelligence, fake news rejection is possible.