Choose Your Own Adventure: Digital Preservation Storage Stories

Abstract

Since 2015, the Texas Digital Library has enhanced its shared digital preservation infrastructure and services to help its 22 member libraries understand their options in choosing hosted preservation storage repositories. TDL’s digital preservation storage is accessed through the only DuraCloud instance outside of DuraSpace, through which members can store content in any of four options: Chronopolis, Digital Preservation Network (DPN), or Amazon’s S3 or Glacier. TDL encourages choosing cultural-heritage community-based Chronopolis and DPN over Amazon offerings. Ours is the only consortial DPN partnership. We work closely with members to help them understand their digital preservation needs and pair our technology offerings with their local systems and workflows. We use tools like the NDSA Levels of Preservation, internal auditing and inventorying, and an open grid to help better differentiate the storage options from each other. We share our results widely and have committed to the Digital Preservation Declaration of Shared Values. TDL will share our approach to sustainable digital preservation storage services with the OR community, as it makes connections between storage repositories and various other OSS repository systems.