A digital preservation system (10) for accepting a digital data record as input, for providing a preview of the digital data record on a display screen (80), for writing the data record in human-readable form onto a preservation-quality medium (210), for storage of the medium (210), and for retrieval of the data record from the medium (210). The digital preservation system (10) preserves a data record in human-readable form, along with an associated metadata record, allowing the human-readable preserved data record to be readable in the distant future, independent of specific reading hardware. The preview function allows an operator to specify storage and retrieval characteristics for the data record.