Digital assets and collections are as important as physical archives when storing and managing complex research and other vital data. This is why Jisc, the UK education and research technology solutions not-for-profit, has  launched a service known as Preservation, a fully managed software-as-a-service platform that can help academic institutions manage, store and preserve digital research output. The service works between universities’ existing systems and workflows to help records managers curate and back-up data in a way that enables them to find and access digital assets in the future.

CLOCKSS, aka Controlled LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe), participates in the Keepers Registry as a preservation agency. New reports are made available to the Keepers Registry every begining of the month. Here are some highlights of the previous twelve months.

The CLOCKSS Archive has grown by 4.9 million journal articles, to 38.1 million, and by 14,000 books, to 200,000. The journal growth includes over 2 million new articles, plus almost 3 million backfile articles. In 2020, CLOCKSS is striving to maintain the increased pace of content ingest, to continuously improve the service provided to libraries and publishers, and to consider new strategic preservation initiatives that may be of value to the community.

The study Open is not forever co-authored by Mikael Laakso, reveals that 176 online-only, open-access (OA) journals have disappeared from the internet over the past 2 decades, as publishers stopped maintaining them. This study was based notably on the ISSN Portal and the Keepers’ Registry, as well as on bibliographic indexes such as Scopus, Ulrichsweb, and the DOAJ. A new mandate by research funders set to take effect in January 2021 requires preservation schemes, and the new preservation rule is contained in Plan S—but most online-only journals currently lack such plans. The study highlights the urgency to take collaborative action to ensure continued access and prevent the loss of more scholarly knowledge.

With generous funding from the Institute of Library and Museum Services (IMLS), Ithaka S+R are initiating an 18-month research project to examine and assess how digital preservation and curation systems (DPCS) are developed, deployed, and sustained. Libraries, archives and museums are increasingly dependent on digital platforms to support the curation, discovery, and long-term management of digital content. Yet, some of these systems and tools have substantial sustainability challenges. This study aims to examine the business approaches of community-based DPCS,  and also what it means for DPCS to be inclusive and accessible.

IFLA Journal, IFLA’s Preservation and Conservation Section, and PAC Centres are pleased to announce a call for papers for a special issue focused on storage as a strategic long-term function of libraries, including practices for physical and digital collections based on risk, value, and cost in terms of institutional mission and resources.

Articles for the special issue should be submitted to IFLA Journal for peer review before 30 September 2020.

The Library of Congress will soon release a new version of the Recommended Formats Statement. Recommended Formats Statement identifies hierarchies of the physical and technical characteristics of creative formats, both analog and digital. This annual revision process of the statement aims at ensuring that it correctly reflects the technical characteristics for best practices regarding preservation and long-term access. Notably, there is a specific section about electronic serials.

The 2020-2021 version includes significant changes from the 2019-2020 version. Anyone with input, comments or feedback on any aspect of the Recommended Formats Statement, is requested to share that with the expert team in charge by 15 August 2020, through one of the e-mail contacts listed on the Recommended Formats Statement website.

Before institutions can reproduce materials and publish them online for worldwide access, they have to sort out complicated legal and ethical questions — ones that often stop libraries and other cultural heritage organizations from being able to move forward in setting these treasures free. It is now easier to navigate these challenges, thanks to newly released responsible access workflows developed by the Library, which stand to benefit not only UC Berkeley’s digitization efforts, but also those of cultural heritage institutions such as museums, archives, and libraries throughout the nation.

At the recent Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) session “ARKs in the Open,” Karen Hanson, Senior Research Developer at Portico, joined panelists from the University of California, Smithsonian Institution, and FamilySearch International to discuss Archival Resource Keys (ARKs) and their use as persistent identifiers.

The full recorded session is available to view on CNI’s website.

Following a year-long public discussion and building on existing community consensus, several stakeholders have collaboratively developed and endorsed a set of guiding principles to demonstrate digital repository trustworthiness. Transparency, Responsibility, User focus, Sustainability and Technology: the TRUST Principles provide a common framework to facilitate discussion and implementation of best practice in digital preservation by all stakeholders.

In March 2020, the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) hosted a webinar on ‘Enacting Environmentally Sustainable Preservation’. This webinar was based on a recent article in American Archivist. In the paper, the authors (Keith Pendergrass, Walker Sampson, Tim Walsh and Laura Alagna) call for a paradigm shift to create environmentally sustainable digital preservation. They focus in particular on three key areas, asking to consider how we view and enact appraisal, permanence, and the availability of digital content. They encourage to make sustainable choices by integrating environmental sustainability into existing decision-making criteria and follow with detailed discussion and a framework for helping more effectively consider the choices made.