Checksum or Fixity? Which tool is for me?
The digital preservation community are in agreement that file fixity and data integrity are important. Indeed there is a whole row devoted to this in the NDSA Levels of Preservation . But how do we all do it? There are many tools out there - see for example those listed in COPTR . It was noted in the NDSA Fixity Survey Report of 2017 that there isn't really a consensus on how checksums are created and verified across the digital preservation community. Many respondents to the survey also gave the impression that current procedures were a work in progress and that other options should be explored. From the conclusion of the report: "Respondents also talked frequently about improvements they wanted to make, such as looking for new tools, developing workflows, and making other changes to their fixity activities. It may be useful, then, for practitioners to think of their fixity practices within a maturity or continuous improvement model; digital preservation practitione