Digital Preservation Framework

The University of Alberta Library (UAL) values its role as a steward of both the print and the digital scholarly record. Stewardship of the scholarly record represents a goal that is larger than any single institution, requiring many willing and active participants to achieve and ensure the best possible outcome. This document outlines our commitment towards undertaking digital preservation activities to the best of our ability and with the explicit goal of ensuring long-term access.

UAL’s Digital Preservation Framework is informed by the Open Archival Information System (OAIS)1 reference model and references the attributes outlined in the Trusted Digital Repositories: Attributes and Responsibilities2, which focuses on the following areas:

Administrative Responsibility

UAL is committed to undertaking the steps necessary to preserve materials of enduring value for future research, scholarship, and use. UAL monitors and ensures the integrity, authenticity and usability of digital objects entrusted to its care, including taking necessary actions to mitigate the effects of technological obsolescence and media decay. UAL preserves digital objects in line with the following principles:

  • Institutional Responsibility: UAL is committed to supporting the mission of the University of Alberta which includes teaching, learning and research. It provides both services and infrastructure to preserve research and scholarship created at the University, as well as in support of University interests.
  • Fiscal Stewardship: Stewardship of resources acquired or created by or donated to UAL.
  • Scholarly Commitment: UAL identifies, acquires, digitizes, and preserves born digital and digitized content in support of scholarship at all levels.
  • Consortial and Partnership Obligations: UAL undertakes consortial and partnership agreements to share and in some cases, assume responsibility for preserving designated digital content.
  • Contractual and Legal Obligations: UAL abides by all contractual and legal obligations it has to content publishers and other partners.

To fulfill the above, UAL engages in the operation of a comprehensive digital preservation program which is: transparent, reliable, scalable, and sustainable.

Organizational Viability

Scope

UAL’s digital preservation program includes all digital materials identified to hold value to UAL and its community that fall within its overall collection policy including the Archives Policy of the University of Alberta Archives (UAA). Preservation decisions are based on an assessment of the fitness and long-term access requirements of individual digital objects or collections. The scope of UAL’s digital preservation program includes:

  • Locally produced born-digital resources
  • Digital surrogates produced by UAL
  • Digital resources acquired by UAL through purchase, donation or other agreement
  • Digital resources licensed by UAL with perpetual access and archival rights
  • Digital resources preserved in partnership with other parties
  • Digitized and born-digital archival records as specified in the UAA Archives Policy.

Operational Priniciples

  • Strategic Action: Policies and procedures help to define strategic actions that guide an organization towards accomplishing its objectives. UAL acts based on policies and procedures which are clearly understood, well documented, standards-based, and communicable.
  • Trustworthy Infrastructure: Developing and maintaining necessary hardware, software, and protocols to ensure long-term access is a key component for any digital preservation program. UAL uses technology architectures which ensure the authenticity, integrity and usability of the preserved content.
  • Compliance: Meeting the requirements of all contracts, licenses, and agreements with respect to rights, responsibilities, and expectations for long-term preservation of designated digital content.
  • Building Capacity: Building shareable expertise in digital preservation practices, ensuring those responsible for the preservation planning and operations are well-trained and knowledgeable in their practice.
  • Team-Based Effort: Maintaining a feedback loop on the digital preservation program plan with involved staff at UAL to ensure that disciplinary-specific challenges to preservation in the local environment are addressed.
  • Collaboration: Identifying and partnering with other institutions and collegial parties to accomplish objectives that cannot be met with UAL’s efforts alone.
  • Aligning with Communities of Practice: Participating in the development and adoption of digital preservation community standards, practice and solutions.

Roles + Responsibilities

UAL dedicates positions to the management of the digital preservation function and the lifecycle of digital asset management. These positions are responsible for fulfilling the stewardship, curatorial and technological roles in the following areas: administration, overall coordination, policy development, collection development, organization and description, infrastructure development, and services.

Selection + Acquisition

UAL acquires, creates and preserves digital content of enduring value for future research, scholarship and use, with respect to their intellectual property, privacy, and associated rights.

Access + Use

UAL uses current technology and tools to provide a range of access services to its designated user community. More detailed information can be found in terms of use statements, rights statements, and licenses.

Challenges

  • Technology: Obsolescence arising from rapid changes in technology creates challenges in preserving digital content in the long term. Like any other organization engaged in digital preservation, UAL strives to be responsive to continually changing technology.
  • Scope: The ever-increasing volume, variety and exponential growth of digital content adds complexity to the preservation problem. UAL requires policies and procedures in place for systematic selection of content with enduring value.
  • Cost: High startup investments, unknown maintenance costs, and a lack of mature business models to operate digital preservation programs create challenges for organizations. With limited budgetary resources, UAL has to be very strategic about funding its digital preservation program.
  • Expertise: Digital preservation requires a range of specialized professional skills bridging policy, content, metadata, technology, management, security, and related activities. UAL needs to maintain the right complement of staff with the appropriate skills in the face of economic uncertainties and has to provide appropriate training to ensure continuity of services.
  • Prominence: The magnitude and significance of technical, curatorial and managerial activities required in providing long-term access to digital materials are largely unknown or unrecognized by the wider community receiving such services. UAL needs to raise awareness of the importance of digital preservation for its internal staff and for the broader community it serves.

Financial Sustainability

Institutional Commitment

UAL allocates internal operational funds for digital preservation activities as well as continually seeks external partnership opportunities or funding to extend its digital preservation scope and capabilities.

Cooperation + Collaboration

Given the challenges mentioned above, UAL recognizes the need for collaboration in digital preservation and works to foster relationships. The library is committed to collaborating within the University and with other institutions to: advance its digital preservation program, share infrastructure, exchange lessons learned, extend the breadth of expertise, and gain access to a wide array of content to meet the needs of the designated user community.

Technological + Procedural Suitability

UAL uses appropriate preservation strategies to deal with challenges related to technological obsolescence. The library adopts preservation strategies which are based on accepted best practices in the digital preservation community. UAL uses a tiered preservation approach, bit-level and full preservation, to address varying preservation requirements. Depending on the level of preservation, a digital object is subject to a series of ongoing preservation actions before and after going into the preservation storage. UAL ensures that digital objects are stored in a reliable archival storage for long-term preservation. The library actively seeks and continuously updates its strategies and infrastructure to ensure long-term preservation.

System Security

UAL is strongly committed to actively monitoring and supporting the security and integrity of our systems and networks. The library selects in-house or vendor hosted systems that operate on well-supported operating systems and other core infrastructural software and ensure that they have adequate hardware and software support as well as a backup functionality, sufficient for the repository’s services and the data held, including associated metadata and supporting documentation.

Procedural Accountability

The library is committed to meeting the needs of its communities through the use of well-informed policies and procedures. Library staff actively monitor and respond to related digital preservation developments, including, but not limited to, developments in audit and certification, technical infrastructure, unique identifiers and metadata.

Standards Compliance

UAL is committed to meeting the needs of its communities through the development and application of well-informed policies, procedures, infrastructure and strategies in conformance with industry and community standards and best practices. UAL uses demonstrable processes to ensure that content is secure and preserved, and remains open to peer reviews and any other appropriate assessment methods available.

Audit + Transparency

UAL is committed to assessments and peer reviews. The library strives to respond and adapt to changes in the digital preservation community through routinely revisiting its policies and procedures.

Additional Digital Preservation Resources

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