Digital Preservation Policies

Motivation

A high-level policy that defines an organization's commitment to digital preservation is an essential component of an effective and sustainable program. Developing an explicit digital preservation policy is a requirement for complying with prevailing community standards and practice (e.g., the TRAC requirements, the procedural accountability requirement of a trusted digital repository, but not every organization should have to develop their policy froim scratch. 

Policy resources

Here's a proposed model document for an organization's digital preservation policy framework to use as a starting point and some examples of digital preservation policies that have been developed by organizations:

• Columbia University Library
• Cornell University Library 
• FCLA Digital Archive (FDA) Policy Guide
• Georgia Archives
• Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) 
• Library and Archives of Canada    
• National Library of Australia
• North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources
• UK Data Archive

Institutional sources

And some digital preservation strategies developed by organizations:

• British Library
• National Library of Wales
  

Community sources

And some other community sources pertaining to digital preservation policies:

• JISC-sponsored report on digital preservation policies  
• Erpanet policy tool

Other sources

 And other policy-related sources:

• Policy-making for Research Data in respoitories: A Guide
• OpenDOAR Policies Tool

Policy spectrum

One consideration in reviewing community documentation is that the term policy is used in a variety of ways and might reflect one of several levels, as illustrated in the following diagram (McGovern 2008):

Machine-actionable policies

Several digital preservation research and development projects focus on developing machine-actionable policies using varying approaches:

• PLEDGE (these results use the REI policy language and are in part reflected in iRODS)
• PLANETS (using the OCL - Object Constraint Language - in developing a preservation planning policy engine)

Call for contributions

Please add to these resources and/or share your own policies.