Preserving the Digital Record at the Academic Preservation Trust

A new, 900+ word article about the APTrust published by the University of Virginia’s, “UVA Today”.
From the Article:

APTrust – more formally, the Academic Preservation Trust – is a massive, UVA-led initiative [with 17 university members] meant to remove that threat. Scholars have been creating digital-only materials on a regular basis since the early 1990s, but with every new advance in technology and huge growth in the volume of digital content, these materials are in danger of disappearing or becoming obsolete and inaccessible.
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The idea for APTrust grew out of conversations between [former UVA Vice President and Chief Information Officer] James Hilton, [former University Librarian and Dean of Libraries] Karin Wittenborg and myself,” said Martha Sites, the current University Librarian, Dean of Libraries and executive lead of APTrust. “James was pursuing a national effort to look at what we call, ‘deep dark preservation.’”
“Deep dark preservation” refers to the multiple layers of protection needed to effectively archive a digital file and the technology it runs on for future use.
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To date, APTrust has already preserved more than 16 terabytes of data from all its partner institutions. Due to its rapidly growing storage-space demands, the group currently uses Amazon Web Services to store and safeguard all of its contents. Every piece of data is protected through multiple levels of redundancy.

Read the Complete Article
Direct to List of APTrust Members

Filed under: Academic Libraries, Data Files, Libraries, News, Preservation