Archives

January 14, 2020

MetaArchive Member Profile: Purdue University

By: Sandi Caldrone and Michael Witt

MetaArchive Member Profiles

Tell us a bit about the digital preservation program at your organization?

The Purdue University Research Repository, also known as PURR (insert cat joke here), is one of a couple of Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies repositories which utilize MetaArchive for preservation storage. PURR is a university core research facility provided by the Libraries, the Office of the Executive Vice President for Research and Partnerships, and Information Technology at Purdue. It provides an online, collaborative working space, data sharing, and publication platform for Purdue researchers and their collaborators. PURR also provides preservation support for published datasets and the MetaArchive Cooperative is a huge part of that preservation support.

Looking ahead, what are you excited about, or what’s on the horizon for your program?

We’ve recently started to talk with faculty members who create virtual reality (VR) environments and objects as part of their research. VR preservation is an exciting and challenging new area for us and we are looking into how our platform and preservation workflows can support the preservation of VR objects and what new features or support we might need to develop down the road.

“We’ve recently started to talk with faculty members who create virtual reality (VR) environments and objects as part of their research. VR preservation is an exciting and challenging new area for us and we are looking into how our platform and preservation workflows can support VR preservation and what new features we might need to develop down the road.”

Pictured back row L-R: Standa Pejša, Carly Dearborn, Matthew Kroll, Michael Witt. Front row L-R: Clair Stirm, Anthony Fuentes, Sandi Caldrone, and Yanqun Kuang.

Tell us a bit about your local workflow. How has the MetaArchive preservation storage service been incorporated?

We were lucky to have been still developing PURR when the Libraries joined the MetaArchive Cooperative and were able to develop our preservation infrastructure with a distributed model in mind. We use BagIt bags to package our datasets and metadata for preservation.

We also regularly try to think through a “fire drill” scenario—what would we do if we experience partial loss of content in our repository? This has proven to be a great way for us to interrogate the construction of our archival units and determine if we have embedded the necessary metadata to rebuild our local repository from our backups in MetaArchive.

Tell us about your experience in participating in the MetaArchive community. How has it influenced you or your work?

Digital Preservation is hard work, and MetaArchive has a demonstrated track record of success with the biggest challenges of digital preservation, which aren’t related to storage or technology, but governance and sustainability. It is so valuable to have a built-in community to troubleshoot the various issues that arise in digital processing, preservation planning, and everything in between. The MetaArchive Cooperative represents a mature solution and community—it isn’t a flash in the pan.

December 19, 2019

MetaArchive Member Profile: Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library

By: Josh Hogan on behalf of the Historically Black Colleges and University Library Alliance (HBCU LA)

MetaArchive Member Profiles

Tell us a bit about the digital preservation program at your organization?

Since 2010, the Atlanta University Center (AUC) Woodruff Library has served as the technical lead and host of the LOCKSS server on behalf of the HBCU Library Alliance’s membership in the MetaArchive Cooperative.  Digital preservation at the AUC Woodruff Library is implemented by the Digital Preservation Working Group (DPWG), a collaborative team with members from the Archives Research Center, the Digital Services Department, Records Management, and the IT Department.  The DPWG is responsible for identifying, acquiring, and providing the means to preserve and ensure ongoing access to selected digital assets and associated metadata in accordance with AUC Woodruff Library’s collection development policies. For the past three years, we have pursued a three-year plan to develop our policies, workflows, and priorities.

Looking ahead, what are you excited about, or what’s on the horizon for your program?

We are excited about recently completing a revision of our digital collection development policy, providing clarity to our collecting areas related to born digital materials. We are also pleased to have wrapped up our first three-year plan, completing all of our goals for the period. We are eager to tackle the development of the new three-year plan in the coming months with an eye toward taking the program to the next level.

Member Profile: Atlanta University Center Woodruff Library. "We are excited about recently completing a revision of our digital collection development policy, providing clarity to our collecting areas related to born digital materials. We are also pleased to have wrapped up our first three-year plan, completing all of the goals for the period. We're eager to tackle the development of the new three-year plan in the coming months with an eye toward taking the program to the next level." Photograph of Cliff Landis, Jessica Leming, Robert Fallen, Josh Hogan, Alex Dade, Aletha Carter, Suteera Apichatabutra, Christine Wiseman.
“We are excited about recently completing a revision of our digital collection development policy, providing clarity to our collecting areas related to born digital materials. We are also pleased to have wrapped up our first three-year plan, completing all of the goals for the period. We’re eager to tackle the development of the new three-year plan in the coming months with an eye toward taking the program to the next level.”

Pictured back row L-R: Cliff Landis, Jessica Leming, Robert Fallen, Josh Hogan. Front row L-R: Alex Dade, Aletha Carter, Suteera Apichatabutra, Christine Wiseman

Tell us a bit about your local workflow. How has the MetaArchive preservation storage service been incorporated?

Our local workflow identifies three broad categories of material to be preserved: born digital archival material, digitized archival material, and born digital institutional photographs and records. In addition to these categories, there are two tiers related to the priority of preserving the object or collection. The first tier objects are those of the highest priority, and these will be the ones that we will seek to ingest into robust preservation networks such as MetaArchive. Second tier objects and collections will be preserved in at least two different geographical areas and stored on Amazon Glacier.

Tell us about your experience in participating in the MetaArchive community. How has it influenced you or your work?

The AUC Woodruff Library has long participated in MetaArchive as a member of the HBCU Library Alliance. Most of the material we have ingested has been digitized copies of the founding documentation of the participating HBCUs, and we have been the host site of that initiative since 2008.

We recently participated in the SuperNode Pilot Project, playing the role of one of the ingesting institutions. This participation helped us ingest a significant portion of the digital material that we have identified as tier one, and it helped us evaluate the use of Exactly and OwnCloud as tools for use in our program. We hope that feedback provided to MetaArchive Steering Committee will be useful in determining the future path of this intiative that could reduce barriers to digital preservation for smaller institutions.

May 1, 2017

Consorci de Serveis Universitaris de Catalunya

September 1, 2016

Welcome to new Williams College and Ohio University members!

We are very excited to welcome Williams College and Ohio University as new Preservation members of the MetaArchive Cooperative! As academic libraries, we look to working with them and supporting their efforts to preserve institutional records, born-digital special collections, and research data materials. For more information on the Preservation membership level please check out Join Us!