KeepIt: Kultur, eCrystals, EdShare (and NECTAR) - Preserve It!

KeepIt (April 2009 - September 2010) helped to close the gap between the digital preservation community and people responsible for live repositories. The project focussed on two key areas: KeepIt course for digital preservation of repositories, and the development and implementation of preservation tools for repositories.

Digital preservation is essentially planning and implementing data management requirements for today, tomorrow and the longer term. Repositories are entrusted by their institutions to manage their digital outputs, so data management is clearly a core activity, but extending that to longer term requirements has not happened yet on a wide scale. The types of outputs being produced across institutions that might be managed in an institutional repository (IR) include research papers, science data, arts, teaching materials and theses. Each presents a different challenge to digital preservation practices if these materials are to be effectively managed for longer-term access and use.

There are various preservation tools and services but little awareness or uptake by repositories, perhaps because these are complex and potentially costly. These activities have typically been presented to repositories as additional tasks rather than as integral to their current activities. The tools and the documentation have not usually been designed for these repositories. To change this KeepIt worked with a series of distinctive exemplar repositories to demonstrate the effective management of data over time. Through the KeepIt course the managers and representatives of each repository worked with specialists on the development of preservation strategy, policy and services for repositories, in turn becoming peer evangelists on digital preservation for comparable repositories.

This whole-team approach is essential to foster the emergence of repository preservation culture and services.