On October 3-5, 2011 under Chairmanship of Russia in the Intergovernmental Council of UNESCO Information for All Programme the International Conference "Preservation of Digital Information in the Information Society" took place in Moscow. The Conference was organized by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, Federal Agency on Press and Mass Communications, Russian Committee of the UNESCO Information for All Programme and it working body – Interregional Library Cooperation Center, the State Tretyakov Gallery.

Conference brought together more than 150 participants and guests from Austria, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Venezuela, Vietnam, Gambia, Germany, Denmark, Egypt, India, Iran, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, China, Ivory Coast, Latvia, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mexico, Moldova, Nigeria, Oman, Poland, Russia, USA, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Finland, France, Montenegro, Estonia and Republic of South Africa.

It was attended by top managers and leading specialists of the largest libraries, archives, museums,research institutes, educational institutions, professional associations, international organizations, public authorities, media, publishing, information and communication industry and other structures associated with the issues of digital information preservation.

Inauguration of the Conference was held at the State Tretyakov Gallery on October 3, 2011. On October 4 and the Conference continued its work at Atlas Park-Hotel.

Formal opening and the first plenary session of the Conference held at the State Tretyakov Gallery was conducted by Evgeny Kuzmin, Chairman of the Russian Committee of the UNESCO Information for All Programme, President of Interregional Library Cooperation Center.

Vladimir Grigoryev, Deputy Chairman of the Federal Press and Mass Communications Agency, Ekaterina Chukovskaya, State Secretary – Deputy minister of Culture of RF, Svetlana Zhurova, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma of RF, Sanjay Mishra, Program Specialist of the Communication and Information Sector of UNESCO, Grigoriy Ordzhonikidze, Executive Secretary of Committee of RF in the matter of UNESCO and elected President of ILCC, Sinikka Sipila, General Secretary of Library Association of Finland, spoke at the opening of the Conference about necessity of active and integrated elaboration of issues related to preservation of digital information.

During the first plenary session common approaches to preservation of digital information and activities related to it from the point of view of different subject fields were examined. Report by Dietrich Schüller, Deputy Chairman of Intergovernmental Council of UNESCO Information for All Programme, was devoted to general issues of information preservation. Peter Lor, extraordinary professor of the University of Pretoria (Republic of South Africa) touched a topic related to ethical and politico-economical aspects of long-term preservation of digital information.

Alexander Visly, Director General of the Russian State Library, shared his thoughts about search for balance between rights and desires within the framework of the topic of the conference.  Report by Oleg Naumov, Deputy Head of the Federal Archive Agency, was devoted to problems associated with interaction between archives while working with digital content.  The plenary session was concluded by speech made by Yakov Shreiberg, Director General of the Russian National Public Library for Science and Technology, entitled “Preservation of digital Information in Libraries: problems and solutions”.

Further work of the Conference continued at Atlas Park-hotel, where three plenary sessions took place – «Preservation of information: digital landscape» (conducted by Evgeny Kuzmin), «Policy and education for preservation of digital information» (conducted by Peter Lor) and «National approaches, solutions and vision» (conducted by Winnie Vitzansky, international consultant of ILCC, member of National Committee of Denmark on the UNESCO matters).

Interesting speeches were delivered and discussed within the framework of two sessions – «Digital retention of text documents» (moderators – Yakov Shreiberg and Elena Kozlova, director of research and development centre «Informregistr») and «Digital retention of audiovisual materials» (moderated by Dietrich Schüller).

The Conference revealed that traditional ways of preservation of analogue information – libraries, archives and museums – do not cope now with preservation of digital information, and they themselves raise the alarm. There is not enough understanding at political level that in order to preserve digital information it is required to rapidly create new infrastructure, likely on the basis of traditional infrastructure of information preservation but upgrading and enhancing it.

In the course of the Conference it became obvious that in the majority of countries there is no legislative base now, which would oblige corresponding institutes and structures to professionally deal with information preservation in digital format, and there is no organized policy, which would consequently lead to creation of this base. But all around the world – in developed and in less developed counties – search for answers is in progress  as to what exactly and why is necessary to preserve, who, where, when, at what expense and to what extent must do it.

The Conference made a conclusion that it is necessary to take urgent measures at political and practical scales.  Otherwise there is high probability that soon we will reveal that:

• A huge amount of digitalized information was lost because the process of its digitalizing was not properly accomplished, or because it was not properly and timely catalogued and therefore cannot be now found, or was preserved improperly;
• Huge volumes of network and other information, including that related to history, culture and science (content of portals and web-sites, blogs, social networks, e-correspondence of outstanding people,institutional and personal  archives, etc) was not collected and is lost forever for future generations.

That is why many world figures call the upcoming time “dark information era”, describing it in the terms of “digital Alzheimer”, “digital amnesia” and so on.

The Conference not only revealed problems but also new professional approaches to preservation of rapidly growing volumes of digital information, when the diversity of formats, diversity of information types and types of digital objects  increases and length of their existence decreases because of constant changes in information technologies.

Participants of the Conference repeatedly proposed to use UNESCO Information for All Programme , which declares preservation of information as one of its five priority trends, as an international interdisciplinary and interinstitutional stage for creation of policy frameworks, discussions and exchange of best practices in this sphere.

Participants of the International conference «Preservation of Digital Information in the Information Society: problems and perspectives» unanimously approved final document of the event - Moscow Declaration on Preservation of Digital Information.

The Declaration emphasizes importance and timeliness of the issue raised at the Conference and proposes a number of measures and necessary steps in such spheres as politics,   increase of awareness and education, researches, economics, ICT-industry, cooperation and coordination.  Currently draft document is being refined by a working group including high level experts from Austria, Argentina, Denmark, India, Italy, Republic of South Africa and other countries.

The Conference will become a significant preparatory event for the UNESCO International Forum on digital heritage preservation to be held in Canada in September 2012.