Building a digital preservation archive: tales from the front

Published date01 March 2004
Pages38-42
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/03055720410530988
Date01 March 2004
AuthorPriscilla Caplan
Subject MatterInformation & knowledge management
Building a digital
preservation archive:
tales from the front
Priscilla Caplan
The author
Priscilla Caplan is Assistant Director for Digital Library Services
at the Florida Center for Library Automation, Gainsville, Florida,
USA. E-mail: pcaplan@ufl.edu
Keywords
Digital storage, Archives, Academic Libraries
Abstract
This article describes the evolution of the design of the FCLA
digital archive, a preservation repository under development for
the libraries of the public universities of Florida. The starting
assumptions of the designers were challenged as they moved
from theory towards implementation. The logic leading to
changes in policy and in preservation strategies is described.
Electronic access
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available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0305-5728.htm
The Florida Center for Library Automation was
established in 1985 to provide technology support
to the libraries of the ten public universities of the
State of Florida. Initially our main role was to run a
central installation of an integrated library system
used by all ten university libraries. By the 1990s,
however, FCLA services expanded to support the
delivery of electronic resources by supporting
consortial purchasing and local loading of some
indexes and full text journals. Most recently,
FCLA has been helping the libraries create and
manage their own collections of digital text, images
and other media. FCLA systems provide access to
electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) and
other born-digital content. FCLA also initiated the
PALMM (Publication of Archival, Library and
Museum Materials) program to encourage the
local digitization of source materials and the
collaborative building of web-accessible
collections. There are now more than a dozen
PALMM collections, ranging in focus from
Floridiana to herbarium specimens.
It is a natural step to go from thinking about
building digital collections to thinking about
preserving them. Building a preservation archive
seemed a logical extension of FCLA’s mission as a
central support organization devoted to building
the technical infrastructure and services needed by
a set of distributed, independent libraries. An
archive developed and maintained by FCLA could
give the libraries a trusted and (hopefully) cost-
effective alternative to building their own archiving
facilities or contracting with commercial services.
Because the library directors would also serve as
the advisory board of the archive, this would also
give the libraries more control over the archive’s
policies and services than they were likely to
achieve with other options.
FCLA applied for and received a grant from the
US Institute of Museum and Library Services
(IMLS) to develop a facility called the FCLA
digital archive (FDA). Our original plan was
relatively simple. Our preservation strategy would
be based primarily on forward migration. When a
file format was in danger of becoming obsolete, a
new version of every object in that format would be
created in some more current successor format.
The original source file would be discarded and the
new version would be retained and (if necessary)
migrated to the next successor format. In some
cases we might also normalize a source file, defined
as making a version of it in a format considered
more stable. In that case both the original source
version and the normalized version would be
migrated forward for as long as possible.
VINE: The Journal of Information and Knowledge Management Systems
Volume 34 · Number 1 · 2004· pp. 38-42
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited · ISSN 0305-5728
DOI 10.1108/03055720410530988
The author thanks Christopher Vicary and
Andrea Goethals for their contributions to this paper.
38

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