April 22, 2008 -- The partners in the NDIIPP digital preservation network continue to attract new partners as organizations large and small see the need to devote resources to the preservation of an ever-growing body of digital content.
The MetaArchive (external link) Cooperative, the NDIIPP project led by Emory University, has made significant progress in the past few months in both its organizational and technical work. "We have good news to report regarding the cooperative’s expansion, increased training, workshop opportunities and new grant funding support. We have also launched a new Web site and listserv," said Katherine Skinner, the MetaArchive’s program manager.
The MetaArchive Cooperative is based at Emory University.
The project has just welcomed its first international sustaining member, Hull University in England. "More than five dozen institutions have now contacted us about membership, and we plan to welcome additional new members this spring," said Skinner. "We are jointly launching an Electronic Theses and Dissertations archive with the Networked Digital Library of Electronic Theses and Dissertations this month. In June we will launch a History of the Slave Trade archive to support the work of archivists, scholars and researchers in this area. These archives will join the established, ongoing Southern Digital Culture archive that we have run since 2004."
The MetaArchive Cooperative’s new Web site is aimed at three overlapping audiences: MetaArchive members, those interested in designing or joining a private LOCKSS network, and those interested or participating in distributed digital preservation. The site currently contains documentation on the MetaArchive’s network, processes, business plan and organizational framework; soon, the site will offer a tools, scripts and documentation registry for private LOCKSS (external link) networks. This month, the site will also offer a downloadable version of the "Guide to Distributed Digital Preservation."
In June 2008 the MetaArchive Cooperative and the Networked Digital Library of Electronic Theses and Dissertations will jointly host a workshop (external link) in conjunction with the electronic theses and dissertations conference in Aberdeen, Scotland, for those interested in joining the archive and learning more about the digital preservation of these works.
The cooperative received notification this quarter that it has been awarded a $300,330 grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to extend its digital preservation services to libraries, archives, government agencies, historical societies and other cultural heritage repositories throughout the United States. The project will transform the MetaArchive Cooperative, a community-based distributed digital preservation network, from a regional project to a sustainable digital preservation business with a national impact. As part of the project, the cooperative will build a bridge between the LOCKSS software that provides the MetaArchive network’s technical framework with the Storage Resource Broker framework being designed by the San Diego Supercomputer Center, and will make that bridge available to other projects via an open-source license.
