The KeepIt project held a meeting to discuss digital preservation repositories. It has two strands: people (e.g. repository managers) and technology (e.g. preservation tools). The meeting covered topics like organizational issues, costs, workflows and formats. A course on preservation tools was evaluated positively, though applicability was sometimes too focused on research data. Objectives included upgrading repositories, specializing tools for teaching/learning and research formats, and assessing preservation requirements based on anticipated growth. Lessons learned included the value of existing tools, positive response to hands-on practice, and need to simplify tools for non-specialists and integrate them into repositories. Exemplar repositories can influence peers by exemplifying digital preservation achievements in their

1. An update on the KeepIt project
for the JISC exemplars meeting
Steve Hitchcock and Dave Tarrant
ECS, University of Southampton
London, 14 June 2010

2. Digital repositories diversifying:
institution-wide outputs
KeepIt exemplar preservation repositories
Research Arts
Science Teaching

3. KeepIt has two strands
•People: in our case, repository managers
•Technology: principally, preservation tools

4. Module 1, Organisational issues, audit, selection and appraisal
School of ECS, University of Southampton, 19 January 2010
Module 2, institutional and lifecycle preservation costs
School of ECS, University of Southampton, 5 February 2010
Module 3, Primer on preservation workflow, formats and characterisation
Westminster-Kingsway College, London, 2 March 2010
Module 4, Putting storage, format management and preservation
planning in the repository
University of Southampton, 18-19 March 2010
Module 5, Trust, of the repository, of the tools and services it chooses
University of Northampton, 30 March 2010

5. Evaluation: course structure
“Structure and development through the course was excellent.
Presentations and practicals gave good introductions to all the tools.
Applicability sometimes focussed too much on IRs and research data”

6. Course evaluation summary
“Many of these tools are, of necessity, complex in scope and time consuming.
The challenge is to understand which one to use in which situation and
to what depth to engage with it.”

7. Evaluation module 4
“This part of the course made me appreciate how big the area of preservation is
and also the amount of research undertaken in this area.”

8. Objectives:
EPrints preservation tools
All exemplars want to upgrade to EPrints version
3.2 and apply the preservation tools. The speed
with which this can happen depends on local IT
support and repository service providers.

9. Objectives:
type-specific exemplars
The two type-specific repositories want to
specialise and optimise the tools
•Edshare: to identify a typical format profile
for teaching and learning repositories and
assess the preservation implications
•eCrystals: to add the two main formats used
in the field to the tools, and to seek to
coordinate this with the organisations who
maintain the formats

10. Objectives:
institution-wide exemplars
No two exemplars are the same, and the
institution-wide exemplars are taking
different approaches:
•NECTAR (Northampton) is using DAF to
estimate, anticipate and scope its content
requirements in coming years
•UAL Research Online is using DRAMBORA’s
risk-based approach to assess its preservation
requirements

11. Preservation costs
•eCrystalscontributed to KRDS2 survey
• All exemplars and trainees have been
invited to evaluate LIFE3 beta

12. Lessons from the KeepIt course
• The digital preservation community has produced an
array of tools covering most requirements.
• Repository managers have responded positively to
practice with these tools.
• Repository managers need to act to shape their
repositories for the next phase of development:
expansion; diversification or focus.
• These tools support this process, as well as the technical
management of digital preservation.
• Still need to reduce complexity and make tools simpler
for non-specialists.
• One approach is to integrate tools into familiar
interfaces, such as repositories.
• This is a great story for digital preservation

13. Preservation Repository Exemplars
• How do we exemplify?
• What does it mean to exemplify?
The exemplar repositories have the
opportunity to present to, and
influence, their peers, in their
communities, in their fields. Other
repositories want to hear from their peers
what has been achieved, and they are more
likely to emulate that experience than they
are to emulate experts.