About Digital Preservation at ICPSR

The primary objective of the digital preservation function is to ensure long-term access to the more than 500,000 files in the ICPSR collections. ICPSR is a data archive with a nearly 50-year track record for preserving and making data available over several generational shifts in technology. The digital preservation program actively supports ICPSR's mission statement:

ICPSR provides leadership and training in data access, curation, and methods of analysis for a diverse and expanding social science research community.

Community Standards and Practice

Disaster Planning is another important component of digital preservation.

Since the release of the Preserving Digital Information report in 1996, the digital preservation community has been formulating and promulgating standards and practice, such as:

• Trusted Digital Repositories: Attributes and Responsibilities, 2002

• Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS), 2003 [ISO 14721:2003]

• Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification (TRAC): Criteria and Checklist

ICPSR's Approach to Digital Preservation

Building on its singular track record for preserving data over time, ICPSR has made it a priority to demonstrate compliance with prevailing standards and practice of the digital preservation community. ICPSR examples include:

• Participation in test audits conducted by the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) using the TRAC audit checklist

• Appointment of a Digital Preservation Officer (DPO)

• Development and promulgation of a digital preservation policy framework

• Documented progress towards a comprehensive set of policies and procedures

• Mapping of ICPSR procedures to OAIS requirements

• Design and implementation of the digital repository for lifecycle management in accordance with OAIS and using Fedora , an open source repository system that is increasingly used for managing digital content of all kinds

• Implementation of disaster planning procedures

• Identification of gaps in community practice for approaches to preserving social science research data and shared efforts to address these gaps

• Development of appropriate preservation strategies for new types of social science research content, e.g., Web sites, audio, video, and geospatial information systems

Roles and Responsibilities

At ICPSR, digital preservation is carried out as a distributed function that is integrated into operations across the organization:

• ICPSR's Digital Preservation Officer (DPO) is responsible for developing and promulgating good practice to align ICPSR with the digital preservation community.

• Processors in the General Archive and in the topical archives at ICPSR ensure that core preservation activities are completed and documented, as data and associated files are acquired, processed, and prepared for release.

• The Computing and Network Services (CNS) unit at ICPSR supports digital preservation by ensuring and enforcing data security, overseeing the development of automated tools and workflows for processing and preserving data and its associated content, and coordinating the creation and secure management of copies of files over time.

• The Director of ICPSR, the Collection Development unit, the topical archive managers, and the Collection Delivery unit all participate in digital preservation at ICPSR through decision-making and other contributions that inform policies and practice.

• The ICPSR Council, an elected advisory board, evaluates high-level policy documents and reviews programmatic plans and progress.

For more information, see the Digital Preservation at ICPSR Web site, which provides access to current policies, documents standards compliance efforts, discusses current projects and priorities, cites relevant university and community documentation, defines core preservation terms (reflecting both Community and ICPSR usage), and provides updates on the digital preservation management training program that ICPSR hosts.