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. A preview function allows an operator to specify storage and retrieval characteristics for the data record.