May 27, 2010 -- The University of California Curation Center at the California Digital Library (external link) is developing a new digital preservation repository. Known as the Merritt Project (external link), after a lake near the CDL offices, the new repository development effort is based on a set of "curation micro-services" created at the center.
These micro-services are a breakdown of the different stages involved in digital curation and preservation. Stephen Abrams, the manager of digital preservation technology at CDL, reviewed the new approach in a webcast (external link) on May 20, 2010, highlighting in particular the micro-services that are most foundational to a repository: "ingest" (the process of submitting new content to a digital collection), "inventory," "storage" and "identity" (or identifier assignment).
As a practice for setting up and managing a digital collection, the micro-services developed by the Merritt Project provide the added benefit of operating independently of any proprietary record management system.
Perry Willett, the manager of digital preservation services at CDL, encouraged users of the existing CDL repository to provide feedback on the system by filling out a survey (external link) on user needs.
For those interested in learning more about the Merritt Project, the group expects to make a presentation at Open Repositories 2010 (external link), and also has set up an ongoing Google group for digital curation. (external link)
CDL is partnered with the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program through the Web at Risk and JHOVE2 projects.
