3 Principles for Selecting a Digital Preservation Solution

3 Principles for Selecting a Digital Preservation Solution. Daniel Greenberg. Ex Libris. November 29, 2018.
   This post was in honor of World Digital Preservation Day and lists some important elements to remember when reviewing digital preservation systems:

1. Interoperability different types of data and integrating with other systems

• Support common protocols for harvesting, publishing and searching, e.g. Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) and SRU (Search/Retrieve via URL).
• Ingest content with multiple methods and structures; e.g., BagIt, METS, CSV, and XML.
• Providing well-documented external APIs
• Integrating with other information systems

2. Follow Industry Standards, particularly standard metadata schemas and communication protocols. Benefits of doing this:

• Interoperability between new and existing services and applications.
• Compliance with policies and regulations.
• Introduction of innovative features.
• Enable a robust exit strategy, in case the vendor goes out of business.

3. Scalability:

• Architectural scalability: Start small and grow big. Ability to expand the throughput over time without compromising performance.
• Operational scalability: Ability to customize the system to the institutions’ needs.
• Informational scalability: Keep up with latest strategies, practices, tools and policies by an active user community.
• Organizational scalability: Administer multiple institutions with a single installation; support a flexible consortium model.

Digital Preservation Matters.