Sibyl Schaefer
Digital Preservation Analyst for Research Data Curation; Chronopolis Program Manager
University of California, San Diego
Evviva Weinraub
Associate University Librarian for Digital Strategies
Northwestern University
Many institutions have established digital repository systems in order to preserve the valuable scholarship and cultural heritage that is either generated or collected by their constituencies. In addition, many of these same organizations have distributed copies of these materials to various locations in order to mitigate the risks associated with lack of geographic diversity, lack of technological diversity, and loss of data related to human activities and systems failures. Services like APTrust, LOCKSS, DPN, and Chronopolis have developed to provide this geographical diversity. As these services have matured, the problem of tracking data from a local repository to a distributed preservation service has not been resolved. Northwestern University and the University of California, San Diego were awarded an Institute of Museum and Library Services Planning Grant (LG-72-16-0135-16) to explore the integration between local repositories and distributed digital preservation systems. This grant seeks to answer questions like, “How does one curate objects to ingest into a long-term dark preservation system?” as well as questions regarding managing multiple copies and versions of digital objects in multiple systems and the implications of varying storage structures on data restoration. To uncover answers, the grant team distributed a survey and also conducted a series of in-depth interviews with cultural heritage institutions. This talk will describe the findings from both, highlighting results regarding criteria used in curation decisions, versioning practices, common workflows and workarounds, and the use (or not) of preservation policies.