Comprehensive digital preservation repositories: gaps, and what do we mean by “repository” anyway?

Abstract

From a technical perspective, repositories have reached the point where there is no valid reason for certain classes of content or format types to be excluded from digital preservation services. At minimum, it should be reasonable to ingest these materials in order to perform bit-level preservation, and potentially provide access. In fact, this is not the case that we find across the preservation repository landscape today. It can be observed that in almost all cases where a digital preservation repository does exist, it only serves a limited amount of the content held by the institution of the total amount that should be preserved for the long-term. This repository rant will present observations a wide variety of organizations managing digital collections over the long-term, and describe the shortcomings found in the pursuit of comprehensive digital preservation of collections, with recommendations and examples on how this situation can be overcome.