Archives

November 3, 2023

Announcing the 2024 MetaArchive Leadership Team Candidates

The MetaArchive Cooperative is pleased to announce the candidates for the 2024 Leadership Team election. Details about each position can be found in our Governance Procedures.

Elections will be held from November 6th, 2023 to November 29th, 2023.

Elected Leadership Team members will take office on January 1st, 2024.

The voting representative for each Institutional and Collaborative member will receive a ballot via email on November 13th.

Reid Boehm

Research Data Systems Manager, Purdue University Libraries

Running for: Chair-Elect

Candidate Statement

Working as the Research data systems manager at Purdue University Libraries and managing Purdue University Research Repository is in many ways my dream job because it allows me to work with both the human and technical elements of research data stewardship and with a repository held in high regard within the research data management community. Every day I learn more from researchers, my colleagues, and in the process of developing and sustaining campus partnerships. My doctoral degree is in information science and ever since I’ve worked in academic libraries supporting researchers and working with research data repositories. My background is in research data management, curation, and repositories, starting with an internship at a NASA archive center and a post-doc at Notre Dame Libraries. I enjoy collaborative research on data services and repository related issues. In the past year and a half, since coming to Purdue and getting involved with the collaborative as a member and in working with the Community Research Task Force I am learning multitudes in the realm of preservation, and in a broader extent how a distributed network made up of diverse institutions can sustain and support each other and their system in the face of changes and challenges. I enjoy working with the collaborative, and would like to contribute as a member of leadership to be a part of the effort to support and sustain a valuable network that plays a major role for so many in this field.

Alex Kinnaman

Digital Preservation Coordinator, Virginia Tech

Running for: Treasurer

Candidate Statement

My work at Virginia Tech is largely policy writing, collaborating on developing and implementing preservation workflows, and consulting with my colleagues on preservation needs. My research interests are in repository certification metrics, digital preservation documentation, and the preservation of 3D objects and Digital Humanities projects.

I am running for the Treasurer position on the Leadership Team. I have served as the MetaArchive Treasurer for almost two years as we investigated changes to our financial health and transitioned our budget structure. I believe that given our current time of transition and changing budget priorities, I can provide context and recent historical knowledge to the way our budget is managed. I also serve as co-chair for the Outreach & Membership Services Committee, and have been with the Outreach folks since 2020, and previously served at the Leadership Team Secretary. I look forward to the opportunity to serve and to helping support the forward-movement of MetaArchive. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Hannah Pryor

Archivist for University Records and Records Manager, University of Louisville

Running for: Secretary

Candidate Statement

Hannah Pryor seeks reelection to the role of the MetaArchive Leadership Team’s Secretary. She is an archives and records management professional with 8+ years of experience in state government and higher education. She currently works at the University of Louisville as their Archivist for University Records and Records Manager and often manages born-digital and digitized university records. She is also a member of the Outreach and Membership Services Committee.

case western reserve university logo
October 30, 2023

Case Western Reserve University

June 7, 2023

MetaArchive’s Community Research Task Force is Planning for the Future of the Community

The MetaArchive Cooperative broke ground in community-based digital preservation when it was founded in 2004. Over its first decade, it grew to be one of the first international, member-owned, distributed digital preservation networks. Other digital preservation organizations, particularly in the community of LOCKSS networks, were able to learn from MetaArchive and refine on its early implementations of LOCKSS and community governance model.

Now at the end of its second decade, MetaArchive is still dedicated to community-driven digital preservation. MetaArchive offers unique value to its members, as one of the only examples of an independent member-owned cooperative that supports decentralized, risk-mitigating digital preservation storage. As a cooperative, MetaArchive thrives on the investments that its members make to the organization. These investments, however, have become increasingly difficult for MetaArchive members to sustain over time. As IT infrastructure in academia and cultural heritage organizations is overwhelmingly outsourced to the cloud, maintaining an on-premise node for a network like MetaArchive starts to be seen as a “boutique” service that is untenable for some of our members. This shifting IT landscape has also made it difficult for current and prospective members to advocate internally for membership in an organization like MetaArchive, because the value of distributed, decentralized digital preservation storage may not be well-understood. These shifts obscure the fact that MetaArchive, as a long-standing consortial effort between academic and cultural heritage organizations, is uniquely positioned to provide responsible stewardship for digital materials and advance digital preservation work across the field.

The digital stewardship commitments made by MetaArchive operate on an inherently longer timescale and look to a fundamentally different set of impact measures than other kinds of digital work. Knowing this helps us define our success by our ability to build capacity for our collective action initiatives, anticipate change, adapt our ways of working, and think strategically about resourcing. This definition of success for community-driven digital preservation guides the current work of the Community Research Task Force. The task force’s primary objective is to research, document, and present information about the current state of the community, and to make an evidence-based recommendation to broader membership regarding MetaArchive’s strategic directions.

In this current change process, MetaArchive is grounded in its core mission of engaging in sustainable digital preservation through community collaboration, while operating with the knowledge that we cannot expect a different result by trying the same things. We have to do things differently to get the long term success we are all working towards. In this case, doing things differently means:

Addressing the costs of existing technical debt

In the first quarter of 2023, we have created an ideal operations budget, intended to move MetaArchive out of an austerity mindset and into a more sustainable resourcing model. In the second quarter of 2023, we are researching and proposing different fundraising strategies to the membership that may help us reach these goals.

Improving the ability of the cooperative to plan for contingencies

In the first quarter of 2023, we created and updated several procedural governance documents, including an operating reserve policy and a contingency plan for sunsetting the network. During this process, we spoke to a number of other digital preservation networks about their own practices for succession and contingency planning. We are also exploring partnerships with other networks and services, as well as a strategic reassessment of our infrastructure, that will make MetaArchive more resilient to change.

Identifying the service capabilities that need to be developed in order to meaningfully lower the barrier to entry for participation in the network

In the second quarter of 2023, we are engaging in one-on-one conversations with all members, gathering information about current barriers to participation in the network. We have identified both ingest and reporting functionalities as major areas for improvement, and we are working in partnership with the LOCKSS team at Stanford to identify areas for improvement and support between MetaArchive and LOCKSS. Another area of focus for this work is revisiting our pricing model, in order to make sure that MetaArchive is lowering financial barriers where possible in order to foster an equitable approach to digital preservation.

We recognize that MetaArchive’s future not only impacts our own members, but also our strategic partners, stakeholders, and the broader digital preservation community. The success of community-driven digital preservation rests on a framework of transparency and deep collaboration, and we are moving through this process in that spirit. If you have any questions about this work and MetaArchive’s future directions, please contact the Leadership Team at ma_leadership@metaarchive.org.

MetaArchive Community Research Task Force (May – July 2023)

Reid Boehm
Brandon Locke
Shanna Smith
Zach Vowell
Hannah Wang
Christine Wiseman

Thank you to the previous members of the MetaArchive Community Research Task Force (January – April 2023) for all of their work and leadership:

Alex Kinnaman
Jessica Meyerson
Nathan Tallman

January 10, 2023

Hannah Pryor

January 10, 2023

Christine Wiseman

November 28, 2022

Announcing the 2023 MetaArchive Leadership Team Candidates

The MetaArchive Cooperative is pleased to announce the candidates for the 2023 Leadership Team election. Details about each position can be found in our Governance Procedures.

Elections will be held from November 28th, 2022 to December 9th, 2022.

Elected Leadership Team members will take office on January 1st, 2023.

The voting representative for each Institutional and Collaborative member will receive a ballot via email on November 28th.

Shanna Smith

Collection Information Specialist, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Running for: Chair

Candidate Statement

Shanna Smith is the Collection Information Specialist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (ISGM). Since starting at ISGM in 2020, she has gradually become more involved in the MetaArchive Cooperative. She currently serves as the secretary of the Leadership Team and co-chair of the Membership Services Committee. She looks forward to 2023 and the opportunity to continue to contribute to and serve the MetaArchive community.

Christine Wiseman

Head of the Digital Services Department, AUC Woodruff Library

Running for: Chair-Elect

Candidate Statement

As Head of the Digital Services Department at the AUC Woodruff Library, she serves as the primary liaison and technical support for the HBCU Library Alliance’s membership in the MetaArchive Cooperative. She has really enjoyed her role serving as a liaison to the Alliance, hosting the LOCKSS server, and advocating for the preservation and access of collections from HBCUs. Recently, there is escalating interest among HBCU Library Alliance members in expanding the breadth and depth of their digital presence, and Christine looks forward to integrating digital preservation into that effort. Involvement in the MetaArchive Cooperative has provided the AUC Woodruff Library staff with opportunities to contribute to the profession in enriching ways including serving on committees and working groups. They have expanded their expertise and knowledge around digital preservation practices and broadened their network of professional contacts. Membership in MetaArchive has tangentially connected them with high profile grant projects including the Library Publishing Coalition Workflows Project and the OssArcFlow (Born Digital Archival Workflows) Documentation Project.

Christine has gained much professionally from her involvement in MetaArchive during her tenure at AUC. As the cooperative finds itself at a pivotal moment of change, she hopes she can contribute to the vision and forward progression as the MetaArchive Cooperative approaches two decades of providing community based digital preservation.

Hannah Pryor

Archivist for University Records and Records Manager, University of Louisville

Running for: Secretary

Candidate Statement

Hannah Pryor is an archives and records management professional with 7+ years of experience in state government and higher education. She currently works at the University of Louisville as their Archivist for University Records and Records Manager and often works with born-digital and digitized university records. She has previously served as recording secretary for the Oklahoma Archivists Association and the board of commissioners for a state agency. Currently a member of the Membership Services Committee, she would love the opportunity to get more involved and use her organizational skills to serve MetaArchive.

February 14, 2022

Bonnie Gordon

February 14, 2022

Alex Kinnaman

February 14, 2022

Shanna Smith

February 1, 2022

MetaArchive Explores Next-Generation Digital Preservation Solutions

The MetaArchive Cooperative has begun a multi-phase research and development project to create a modern distributed digital preservation system. The primary goal is to leverage technical infrastructure advancements in the commercial sector to simplify digital preservation systems and make them more sustainable. These advancements include software defined storage, self-healing file systems, and functions-as-a-service. MetaArchive Technical Committee co-chair Nathan Tallman recently had a journal article published that explores these concepts further.

MetaArchive is partnering with Keeper Technology (KeeperTech) on this project. KeeperTech, based in Virginia, has deep expertise in building modern, secure, and integral data storage and processing solutions for corporations and government agencies. This multi-phase project has exit ramps for either partner at the conclusion of each phase, when specific proposals for the next phase will be developed and approved.

Phase 1 of this project, estimated to take between 2-3 months, will be a collaborative exploration and definition of functional requirements for a distributed digital preservation system. Phase 2 will build on these requirements with KeeperTech developing a prototype system. Phase 3 will consider options for production deployment and implementation alongside LOCKSS, long used by MetaArchive to achieve bit-level digital preservation. All three phases will occur alongside the day-to-day operations and maintenance on the MetaArchive network.

MetaArchive and KeeperTech kicked off Phase 1 in earnest in January 2022. Community Facilitator Hannah Wang and Technical Committee co-chair Nathan Tallman have recently met with the KeeperTech team to share demonstrations of LOCKSS and Conspectus (MetaArchive’s tool for creating archival units in LOCKSS). Bonnie Gordon, from MetaArchive member Rockefeller Archive Center, also presented Archivematica and discussed digital preservation workflows. Soon, KeeperTech will engage the Cooperative with a questionnaire and focus groups to identify current functional requirements of the community. MetaArchive has already provided several inputs into this process to KeeperTech including prioritized, ranked, and justified criteria for digital preservation storage using the Digital Preservation Storage Criteria; a SWOT analysis of LOCKSS; and OSSArcFlow workflow analysis diagrams.

MetaArchive is excited to engage in this important work to advance the digital preservation community. Functional requirements and software code from the project will be openly-licensed and shared with the community for feedback at the end of each phase. We look forward to being able to share the first outputs.

November 15, 2021

Announcing the MetaArchive 2021 Leadership Team Candidates

The MetaArchive Cooperative is pleased to announce the candidates for the 2021 Leadership Team election. Details about each position can be found in our Governance Procedures.

Elections will be held from November 22nd, 2021 to December 10th, 2021.

Elected Leadership Team members will take office on January 1st, 2022.

The voting representative for each Institutional and Collaborative member will receive a ballot via email on November 22nd.

Bonnie Gordon

Rockefeller Archive Center

Running for: Chair-Elect

Biography

Bonnie Gordon is a Digital Archivist at the Rockefeller Archive Center, where she focuses on digital preservation, born digital records, and training around technology. Previously, she worked at the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University. She received her M.A. in Archives and Public History from New York University and her B.A. in History from Purchase College, SUNY.

Election Statement

I have been actively involved in many open source communities, including other communities housed by Educopia. I think open source communities and infrastructure are vital for sustainable digital preservation, and therefore I am looking forward to the opportunity to take an active role in leading the MetaArchive Cooperative’s efforts. I am also excited to bring the perspective of the Rockefeller Archive Center, an independent archives and research center. While longtime members of the Cooperative, we had paused while we solidified our digital preservation policies and digital infrastructure. As we ramp back up, I hope to help advance the MetaArchive community’s goals.

Alex Kinnaman

Virginia Tech

Running for: Treasurer

Biography

I joined the Virginia Tech University Libraries as the Digital Preservation Coordinator in 2017. I have a Bachelor’s in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and an MSLIS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. My work at Virginia Tech is largely policy writing, collaborating on developing and implementing preservation workflows, and consulting with my colleagues on preservation needs. My research interests are in repository certification metrics, digital preservation documentation, and the preservation of 3D objects and Digital Humanities projects. We are currently in the process of responding to a CoreTrustSeal application for our Digital Libraries Platform. I reside in Blacksburg, VA, I enjoy reading, running, and all things spooky, and my cats Finn and Opal who can’t wait to talk to people on my video calls!

Election Statement

I am running for the Treasurer position. Last fall I was elected into the position of Secretary on the Leadership Team, which has given me a higher-level experience in the MetaArchive Cooperative. I have also served as the co-chair for the Outreach Committee since fall 2020 and work with many fantastic committee members to increase engagement and reach in the digipres community. I believe that serving as Treasurer will be an excellent opportunity for me to engage further with MetaArchive and help make decisions that will further progress our community, as well as an opportunity for personal growth. I look forward to serving and to helping support the forward-movement of MetaArchive. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Shanna Smith

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Running for: Secretary

Biography

Shanna Smith is the Collection Information Specialist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and the current co-chair of the Membership Services Committee. She holds a MLIS from Simmons University and has worked in libraries, universities, and museums.

Election Statement

I am excited by the opportunity to serve in the Secretary Position for the Leadership Team. As co-chair of the Membership Services Committee I’m familiar with the importance of recording and distributing minutes form all Leadership Team Meetings. I am humbled by the nomination and if elected I look forward to share my unique institutional experience and support MetaArchive community in this position in the coming year.
July 27, 2021

MetaArchive’s New Mission, Vision, and Values

The MetaArchive Cooperative is pleased to introduce the community to MetaArchive’s newly revised Mission, Vision, and Values Statement.

MetaArchive Mission: “To engage in sustainable digital preservation through community collaboration.”

MetaArchive Vision: “Preserving the past, harnessing the present, preparing for the future”

Revising and developing our Mission and Vision began in 2019 as part of the Changing for Continued Impact (CFCI) series. We wanted to ensure that what the MetaArchive stands for and abides by is reflected in our Mission and Vision statements and to revisit our values as a community. This discussion took an entire session of the CFCI process where all members were given time to brainstorm in a shared document and generate a list of potential options for both the Mission and Vision statements. Small groups were assigned to workshop the lists to finalize a few options individually and report back to the community. The end of CFCI did not bring any final decisions as we had so many moving parts coming together at that point. Recently the Leadership Team revisited the previous notes to explore options and continue workshopping. After narrowing down the options, the Leadership Team presented them to the community for feedback.

Our new Values Statement is an updated version of our previous Operational Principles that better reflects our revised Mission and Vision statements:

  • Encourage and support the long-term preservation of digital content;
  • Promote a cooperative, robust, and decentralized approach to digital preservation;
  • Encourage archives, libraries, research institutes, museums, and other such organizations to build their own preservation infrastructures and knowledge rather than outsourcing this core service to external vendors;
  • Encourage the growth of distributed digital preservation networks for preserving copies of replicated content in secure, distributed locations over time;
  • Maintain a minimal overhead and straightforward mechanisms for collaboration;
  • Administer services that have wide applicability to a range of organizations and digital content;
  • Utilize and create open standards and systems;
  • Ensure that digital materials are stored and maintained in migratable formats and data structures;
  • Promote and support high standards for preservation metadata capture;
  • Undertake research and development projects to advance digital preservation best practices

In addition to these values, we support and adhere to the Digital Preservation Declaration of Shared Values.

MetaArchive looks forward to upholding our new guiding statements and supporting our community. If you have any questions please contact Community Facilitator Hannah Wang at hannah.wang@educopia.org.

June 17, 2021

MetaArchive Announces New Membership Levels

The MetaArchive Cooperative is very happy to announce that we are now welcoming new and returning members under our new membership levels! These new levels and terms signal exciting changes for the Cooperative.

These changes were driven by the MetaArchive members during and after the Changing for Continued Impact (CFCI) Series, a program of intensive evaluations of both our organizational model and our technical approaches to distributed digital preservation. For more information about the outcomes of CFCI, see the blog post written by Matt Schultz, former MetaArchive Community Facilitator.

The new membership levels were authored by two long-time members of the Cooperative, Rachel Howard from the University of Louisville and Deanna Ulvestad from the Greene County Public Library in Ohio, and unanimously approved by the MetaArchive Steering Committee on December 14, 2020.

So what has changed?

Simplified Membership Levels

Here is the nitty gritty of what has actually changed with the membership options offered by MetaArchive:

Pre-2021 2021 and beyond
Sustaining Members: Single organizations that provided leadership for the Cooperative and engaged in preservation activities.

Annual fee: $5,500 (+ technology fee, if applicable)

Preservation Members: Single organizations that engaged in preservation activities.

Annual fee: $3,000 (+ technology fee, if applicable)

 Institutional Members: Single organizations that provide leadership for the Cooperative and engage in preservation activities.

Annual fee: $4,000
Collaborative Members: Groups of institutions (often consortia) that engaged in preservation activities.

Annual fee: $2,500 + $100/member (+ technology fee, if applicable)

 Collaborative Members: Groups of institutions (often consortia) that provide leadership for the Cooperative and engage in preservation activities.

Annual fee: $4,000 + $100/member
Individual Members: Individual practitioners who can now join the Cooperative for free in order to learn about and participate in the community

Annual fee: None

Each Institutional and Collaborative member designates one Voting Representative, and anyone from an Institutional or Collaborative member organization is eligible to serve in a leadership position.

As an incentive for new organizations joining the MetaArchive Cooperative under these terms, we are offering 50% off your first year of membership!

NEW! Storage Rewards

MetaArchive members are given the option to host a LOCKSS cache at their organization. LOCKSS caches are the backbone of the MetaArchive Technical Network – content is geographically distributed across multiple caches, which automatically check in with each other to verify that the content remains complete and identical over time.

In past years, members who have opted not to host LOCKSS caches have paid a $1,000 technology fee instead. With the new membership terms, we have flipped that structure: instead of charging members who do not host caches, we are rewarding members who do host caches. This is in recognition of the time, labor, and money that is involved in setting up and maintaining a LOCKSS cache.

Under the new storage rewards system, members who host a LOCKSS cache receive 10% of contributed storage volume free. This means that, if you provide 48 TB of storage volume through your LOCKSS cache, you will be able to ingest and store 4.8 TB of digital content in the network for free. Any storage used beyond that 10% will be subject to annual storage fees (as of 2021, $0.50/GB/year).

NEW! Individual Memberships

We are most excited to start implementing the Individual Membership option. In the past, if an individual left their MetaArchive member organization, or if their organization left the Cooperative, there was no way for those practitioners to continue to engage in MetaArchive. This community is tight-knit and filled with exciting voices in the field – it is a loss to say goodbye to any of those people!

These new Individual Memberships allow practitioners to join the Cooperative for free. This opens the door not only to former members, but also to any practitioners without a MetaArchive affiliation who are interested in learning about distributed digital preservation and engaging with this community. Individual Members cannot make use of the MetaArchive Technical Network for the preservation of digital collections, and they do not have voting rights in the Cooperative. Individual members can, however, attend meetings, serve on committees, and engage with other members in peer mentoring programs.

We have already begun welcoming new Individual Members to the Cooperative, and we are excited to spread the word! Reach out to Hannah Wang, MetaArchive Community Facilitator, at hannah.wang@educopia.org if you are interested in joining as an Individual Member.

Learn More

Head over to Join Us to learn more about our membership options. If you are ready to take the plunge and talk to someone about membership, get in touch with Hannah Wang, Community Facilitator, at hannah.wang@educopia.org.

June 2, 2021

Hannah Wang

March 26, 2021

Kyna Herzinger