What are the most important aspects of an organisational digital preservation strategy?

Question

What are the most important elements to consider in writing an organisational or corporate digital preservation strategy?

By organisational or corporate, I mean a strategy that goes beyond the technical issues and puts digital preservation into the broader organisational context in which it must be delivered.

Answer 1

I recently put together a digital preservation strategy document for my organization that pulled heavily from the Scholars Portal TDR audit documents.

The strategy outlined:

• Digital Preservation Inventory
• Digital Preservation Systematic Assessment
• Digital Preservation Strategic Plan
• Digital Preservation Implementation Plan
• Digital Preservation Access Policy
• Digital Preservation Designated Community
• Digital Preservation Rights Policy

Inventory: a rigorous inventory of the organization's current infrastructure, and digital objects (scope).

Systematic Assessment: examines current and potential digital library platforms, providing a summary of each, and noteworthy concerns and/or issues.

Strategic Plan: outlines the digital preservation strategy for the organization to ensure continued access to its digital collections by the Designated Community.

Implementation Plan: defines preservation strategies used on organizationally created digital objects

Preservation Access Policy: defines the level to which access will be provided to preservation objects.

Designated Community defines the organization's, secondary, and tertiary communities for long term access to digitally preserved materials.

Rights Policy: defines the transformation (function of copyright - the authorization to migrate an object from an obsolete format) right that must be acquired from content providers in order to provide the full realization of the Digital Preservation Strategy.

(Big thanks to OCUL for the great resource!)

Answer 2

IMO, the most important element of digital preservation strategy is a clear link to organizational mandate. If your strategy isn't directly addressing specific pieces of your organization's overall mandate/mission/general strat plan, it can always be discarded in the interest of expediency, and that is very bad for preservation planning.

Answer 3

A digital preservation policy should establish the institutional foundation for stewarding digital material. It should guide decision-making in all areas with the intent to bring about a stated purpose (e.g., “provide for enduring care of and access to digital collections”). The top management of the institution should approve the policy, which will serve to express official commitment to pursue a well-defined course of action. Specific implementation of actions, technology, practices, standards and other operational details should ideally be governed by separate guidance that flows from the policy.

Some of the major elements of a policy include:

• Purpose statement
• Organizational mandate to collect and maintain digital materials
• Explanation how digital stewardship serves to meet institutional mission and benefits the institution’s constituency
• Roles and responsibilities within the organization, including governance and accountability
• Operating principles or basic assumptions (e.g., “follow community standards and best practices;” “ensure that digital materials under stewardship are inventoried and are recoverable;” “adopt a life cycle approach to management”)
• Risk assessment and preservation actions/levels (degrees of processing/care and criteria for selection, such as value, vulnerability, demand; this can include a statement about a minimal level of processing or “essential steps”)
• A glossary of terms (either a specific list for the institution, or even better, a link to an existing external glossary).

Facing Off with Digital Preservation Policy is a 2011 blog post that summarizes a number of published policies from some major preserving institutions around the world. For a few specific examples, see Establishing a Digital Preservation Policy from JISC Digital Media and the University of Michigan ICPSR Digital Preservation Policy Framework. The Digital Preservation Strategy from Archives New Zealand and Library New Zealand is instructive; so is the NEDCC Digital Preservation Policy Template.

Useful principles can be found in Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification: Criteria and Checklist, as well as DRAMBORA (Digital Repository Audit Method Based On Risk Assessment).

Answer 4

This is an interesting topic.

I am sure some of the following overlap with what is said above.

In my experience the most important aspects of strategy with regard to digital preservation are the following, in order of importance:

1 HUMAN RESOURCES (Quality and passionate professionals who will go above and beyond and will even anticipate the changes and adapt early before disaster -- obsolescence, risk -- strikes.)

2 COMMITMENT (Organizational commitment is critical to institution-wide awareness, care and action -- along with staff, user involvement and consultation.)

3 RECORDS SCOPES (A clearly defined intellectual, moral and physical extent of the records will guide the appraisal process AND the selection/deselection of what matters/doesn't matter.)

4 PROTECTION (Clearly defined plans for protecting the records from all risks will enable the digital continuity of the records, which is the outcome the strategy is designed to ensure. Protection involves content, context, media, movements, access, malware, software, rights, etc.)

5 STANDARDS (The proven, well reasoned or documented theories and practices that guide appraisal, selection, description, storage, access, protection and maintenance of the records. This has a great deal of influence over their digital continuity.)

6 OTHER RESOURCES (Apart from the human resources singled out above as the number one strategic choice or advantage, other resources cover proper staff retention and technical infrastructures as well as access to state of the art research or literature to maintain the sustainability of the records' digital continuity.)

7 DOCUMENTATION (Knowledge -- especially knowledge that explains the why/how/when/where/whom/what expectation of the record -- whether human-shared or recorded in metadata or other processes, is the essential ingredient in all aspects of the digital object's life. Should unforeseen circumstances lead to disaster, recovery at best and understanding at worst will rely on documentation to make a case for the sustainability, economics, or wisdom of letting go of those losses.)

Those are my 2 cents to the discussion on important aspects of a digital preservation strategy.