Working Statement on Long-Term Preservation of SPO Publications

The Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan University Library is committed to providing long-term preservation and access for all of its publications while also acknowledging the complexities involved in preserving digital information. To promote the greatest possible longevity of its content, SPO follows a three-pronged strategy:

• 1. SPO is a unit within the University Library, and all of its publications automatically become part of the Library's collections. In doing so, they benefit from the Library's commitment to maintain and preserve the University Library's collections in support of the University of Michigan's teaching and research goals. Preservation strategies and methods will evolve and vary over time, but this commitment ensures that ongoing preservation scrutiny, evaluation and attention will be given to the publications of SPO. This is the most important means through which we ensure preservation attention to SPO publications.


• 2. SPO publishes in formats that are both publicly documented and widely used, giving the Office a high degree of confidence in its preservation commitment, making it more likely that tools will exist or be developed to undertake preservation actions, and that those actions will result in an understood and controlled transformation or migration. For example, SPO relies heavily upon archival versions of XML and SGML with accompanying, well-documented DTDs and on the TIFF image format. At the request of a publishing partner, such as an author or editor, SPO does sometimes make use of proprietary and other less open data formats to enhance a publication; in these cases SPO works to make sure that partner understands the limits of SPO's ability to guarantee long-term access to this information.


• 3. By publishing within the digital library infrastructure of the University of Michigan University Library, SPO relies upon that infrastructure's continuing work in establishing itself as a Trusted Digital Repository. A Library Information Technology Division task force has developed an action plan for compliance with the Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS) and the joint OCLC/RLG Attributes of a Trusted Digital Repository. In pursuit of these ends, the task force has decided to use CNRI handles to provide unique, persistent identifiers for digital objects. A handle server has been set up and registered. Additional work on formats and strategies for preservation has taken place in the context of establishing our institutional repository and will be generalized to include other content in a merged repository model. The ongoing work of this group will continue to benefit SPO by providing a secure repository for its content. The group is aware that the published content of SPO may have special preservation needs and solicits SPO's advice and feedback in its planning.

Last updated August 1, 2005.