Digital Preservation Policy

UK Libraries’ mandate for the preservation of digital resources is predicated on missions and commitments at both the Libraries and the university level:

• Scholarship: As a land-grant R1 institution of higher education, UK is obligated to support scholarship, teaching, and learning. As more resources and services associated with these areas transition to digital and online environments, UK Libraries’ digital preservation workflows must evolve in tandem to effectively support the identification, stewardship, and preservation of designated digital content. 

• Institutional records: UK Libraries is responsible for maintaining university archives by collecting and preserving permanent university records, including those in electronic formats. This is informed by the records retention schedule established by the State Libraries, Archives, and Records Commission of Kentucky.

• Strategic priorities: UK Libraries’ Strategic Directions includes enhancing and simplifying access to research collections and supporting scholars throughout the research lifecycle. These will be strengthened by digital preservation practices that support the long-term discovery of distinctive collections and university scholarship.

• Contractual obligations: UK Libraries has contractual obligations to preserve and maintain access to certain digital resources. Some obligations derived from federal and state laws require the Libraries to maintain files for access indefinitely. This includes UK Libraries’ role as the Regional Depository for Kentucky as part of the Federal Depository Library Program and its specific role as a member of the ASERL Collaborative Federal Depository Program. 

Consortia and collaborative commitments: UK Libraries has ongoing responsibilities as consortia members and through partnerships with other institutions and agencies. UK Libraries preserves and provides online access to digital resources included in aggregation-based digital libraries hosted by other institutions. These ongoing partnerships are formalized through agreements approved by Libraries’ administration. UK Libraries relies on vendors for digital preservation of electronic resources acquired through subscription. Agreements with consortial partners such as ASERL and HathiTrust center around retaining print copies when digital access is restricted.

The primary purpose of UK Libraries’ digital stewardship and preservation work is to ensure long-term access across time, platforms, and technologies to the variety of information resources housed in the Libraries’ collections. UK Libraries relies on the following principles as the basis for its digital preservation decisions and workflows:

• Standards-Based: Comply with professional best practices and standards. Document and regularly update policies, procedures, and practices in a transparent and consistent manner. 

• Technically Robust: Foster long-term stewardship through commitment to interoperable and reliable tools with a focus on sustainability and scalability. Maintain hardware and software in keeping with quality control specifications and security requirements.

• Up-To-Date: Demonstrate organizational commitment by providing ongoing training and development support as needed.

• Shared Expertise: Levels of preservation and time commitments are determined by collection managers and curators in consultation with functional and technical experts. 

• Collaboration: Digital preservation is a shared community responsibility; contribute back to that community when possible. The Libraries will contribute to national strategies and initiatives, and participate in consortial and collaborative digital preservation solutions when they are a good use of the Libraries’ resources.

• Authentic: Maintain local procedures to meet digital preservation standards and best practices pertaining to provenance, chain of custody, authenticity, and integrity of content.

Legally Compliant: Comply with intellectual property, regulatory, copyright, privacy, and ownership rights for preservation of and access to all digital content.

This policy pertains to UK Libraries collection material only. Preservation activities are generally prioritized on use, risk, and value, regardless of format. The tiers below broadly reflect preservation priorities, however, on occasion, specific resources may be prioritized differently based on urgency, availability, associated costs, or other factors. Additionally, preservation actions will depend on the source and type of content, as well as available technology and expertise. Details related to preservation activities such as file formats, tools, and metadata are articulated in preservation workflow documentation. Software to render digital files will not be preserved.

Tier 1: Born-digital resources: Rigorous effort will be made to ensure long-term preservation of and access to born-digital resources, especially those that are rare or unique. When vendors or off-campus tools are used to capture born-digital resources, copies will be preserved on local storage.

Tier 2: Digitized resources - with fragile, unstable, unreadable, or otherwise inaccessible analog originals: Every reasonable step will be taken to preserve resources with unavailable analog originals or when re-digitizing is not possible. Also included in this tier are digitized resources with annotations or other value-added features making them difficult or impossible to recreate.  

Tier 3: Digitized resources - with stable and accessible analog originals: Minimal measures will be taken to extend the life of digital files with readily available analog originals. The cost of re-digitizing will be weighed against the ongoing cost of preserving digital surrogates.  

Tier 4: Commercially available digital resources: Generally, there is no directive to preserve resources purchased from vendors. Commercially available digital resources are generally maintained and preserved by the vendor, and do not need to be preserved by UK Libraries. However, on rare occasions commercially available digital resources may be considered for digital preservation if the license purchased has granted UK access in perpetuity or if they have granted post-cancellation access, AND the vendor has provided UK Libraries with digital back files. In these cases, if the resource is considered to be at risk or difficult to re-acquire from another source, and the library so chooses, these commercial digital backup files may be considered for digital preservation in order to protect our long-term information needs and the financial investment of the library. Commercial resources which are available through Portico or LOCKSS are considered preserved and available by the Portico and LOCKSS processes and need not be digitally preserved by the UK Libraries.

Out of Scope: Non-permanent and other resources: No preservation steps will be taken for digital resources created or acquired for short term use or deemed non-permanent. Examples include scans for E-reserve and Document Delivery, research guides, and course guides.

UK Libraries endeavors to make its digital resources accessible to all users within reason in accordance with this policy and other Libraries policies and professional best practices. Certain limitations may be placed on access due to legal requirements, donor restrictions, and/or other reasons. In some cases, UK Libraries may be unable to provide the necessary hardware and/or software needed to access the digital resource. When unable to render the original digital file, the Libraries will attempt to provide access to the best possible surrogate.

The ability to preserve digital resources will be necessarily scaled to the level of committed institutional support, including technological infrastructure and human resources, availability of cost-effective solutions, adoption of standards, and development of best practice and procedures. The scope of preservation actions beyond maintaining persistent access to an authentic bitstream and basic metadata will be considered with an aim towards careful, pragmatic evaluation of current demand and future utility, considering the constellation of preservation actions available at the time.

Preservation of any format requires an ongoing cycle of actions and decisions rather than being a single event. In order to be effective, responsibility for the preservation of digital resources requires the participation of preservation specialists, subject specialists, curators, archivists, programmers, digitization specialists, Libraries IT, Libraries administration, and university administration.

This policy will be reviewed at minimum annually to assure timely revisions as technology progresses and preservation strategies and experience mature.

Several challenges impact the effective implementation of digital preservation strategies, including: 

Capacity & Resources 

• Infrastructure: A robust digital preservation repository with an internal user interface and account management is needed to move toward a mature and stable digital preservation system. The Libraries must invest resources to increase capacity and reduce existing bottlenecks. As currently designed, the preservation system can only be accessed and maintained by one individual. This presents significant risk to UK Libraries digital preservation efforts.

• Expertise: Because digital preservation is a collaborative endeavor, UK Libraries should continue to support training opportunities for existing employees as well as grow the Libraries’ capacity through targeted hiring. Currently, only one individual spends a portion of their time maintaining the digital preservation repository’s technical infrastructure, which results in isolated information and expertise. This presents significant risk to UK Libraries digital preservation efforts.
  
   
• Rapid growth and evolution: The technologies that enable preservation of the variety of formats and dissemination mechanisms evolve rapidly. Therefore, a nimble digital preservation program must monitor the evolution of technologies and adjust as necessary. Additionally, assessment and revision of preservation practices is necessary to respond to changing technological capabilities and evolving user expectations. 

Sustainability
Developing a cost-effective model that scales to meet growing storage, infrastructure, and staffing needs is a recognized challenge that has not been fully addressed. UK Libraries would benefit from designated funding to sustain ongoing preservation efforts, including routine operations and infrastructure improvements. 

UK Libraries should also consider the environmental impact of its digital preservation activities and opt for green options when possible.

Digital Preservation

The Five Organizational Stages of Digital Preservation (Kenney & McGovern, 2003)

Levels of Digital Preservation (National Digital Stewardship Alliance, 2019)

OAIS (Open Archival Information System) Reference Model

Developing Digital Preservation Policies

Digital Preservation Plan: Ensuring Long Term Access and Authenticity of Digital Collections (Bishoff, 2010)

Digital Preservation Policies Study (JISC, 2008)

Digital Preservation Policy Framework: A Case Study (Noonan, 2014)

Digital Preservation Policy Tool (ERPAN, 2003)

Example Digital Preservation Policies

Northwestern University Libraries Digital Preservation Policy

The Ohio State University Libraries Digital Preservation Policy Framework (2013)

University of Washington Libraries Digital Preservation Policy (2017)

Authenticity: The quality of being genuine, not a counterfeit, and free from tampering.

Bitstream: A sequence of binary information transmitted, stored, or received as a unit without regard for internal organization or grouping.

Born-Digital: Information originally created as a computer file and represented electronically. Examples: websites, Microsoft Word documents, a digital photograph

Digital Preservation: A comprehensive set of managed activities that are necessary to provide continued access to digital objects.

Hardware: Physical parts of a computer system that include the computer case, monitor, keyboard, and mouse. It also includes all the parts inside the computer case, such as the hard disk drive, motherboard, video card, and many others

Integrity: The quality of being whole and unaltered through loss, tampering, or corruption.

Interoperable/Interoperability: The ability of different information systems, devices, and applications to access, exchange, integrate, and cooperatively use data in a coordinated manner.

Provenance: The origin or source of something or information regarding the origins, custody, and ownership of an item or collection.

Software: A collection of instructions and data that tell a computer how to work. Computer software includes computer programs, libraries, and related non-executable data, such as online documentation or digital media. 

Technological Infrastructure: A set of information technology components that are the foundation of a service; typically physical components (computer and networking hardware and facilities), but also various software and network components.

Definitions are based on those found in the Society of American Archivists’ Dictionary of Archives Terminology. dictionary.archivists.org