| Martin Halbert Director for Digital Programs Emory University |
Katherine Skinner Digital Projects Librarian Emory University |
| Tyler O. Walters Associate Director for Technology and Resource Services Georgia Institute of Technology |
Digital Preservation has been described as a challenge so large and complex that it requires many institutions working cooperatively to accomplish meaningful programmatic advances. Distributed digital preservation especially has come to be seen as a key strategy for successful multi-institutional collaboration on cyberinfrastructure, but there are few organizational and technical examples of truly distributed approaches to preserving locally digitized content. This session will describe recent developments in these areas by MetaArchive (a National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation program) and a new nonprofit corporation called Educopia that has been created to organize and operate such shared cyberinfrastructure programs.
The MetaArchive Cooperative began in 2004 as a collaborative venture of Emory University, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Louisville, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Auburn University, Florida State University, and the Library of Congress. The MetaArchive Cooperative has operated a distributed preservation network infrastructure for several years that is based on the LOCKSS software, and has now transformed into an independent, multi-state membership association hosted by the Educopia Institute and based in Atlanta, Georgia.
The Educopia Institute is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving scholarly communication in socially responsible ways, and especially through the creation of shared cyberinfrastructure between cultural heritage institutions. Such cyberinfrastructure encompasses many new networked technologies and systems that are still poorly understood in comparison to the traditional scholarly infrastructure of libraries and archives. The Institute is a host entity that will act as a catalyst to assist and advise academic and cultural institutions in the creation of new digital means of communicating and preserving the cultural record.
http://www.MetaArchive.org
http://www.educopia.org
http://www.lockss.org
Handout (MetaArchive MS Word)
Handout (Educopia MS Word)