JISC

Preserv 2 is a JISC project investigating and developing infrastructural digital preservation services for institutional repositories. Project partners are SouthamptonUniversity, The National Archives, The British Library and Oxford University.

Together repositories and providers must shape preservation services at all cost levels ranging from all-encompassing ‘black-box’ preservation to pick-and-mix lightweight Web-based services that build on the common starting point, format identification. Building on the PRONOM-ROAR service developed in Preserv1 that identifies format profiles for 200+ repositories, Preserv2 will investigate the following structured process for active preservation aimed at repository content:

• Characterisation identification (as in PRONOM-ROAR), validation, and property extraction
• Preservation planning e.g. risk assessment (of generic risks associated with particular formats/representation
  networks), technology watch (monitoring technology change impacting on risk assessment), impact
  assessment (impact of risks on specific IR content), Preservation plan generation (to mitigate identified
  impacts, e.g. migration pathways)
• Preservation action e.g. migration (including validation of the results), will provide ongoing preservation
  intervention to ensure continued access or provide on-demand preservation action, performing migrations or
  supplying appropriate rendering tools at the point of user access.

Preserv2 will to go forward with the same partners as the original project – Southampton University, The National Archives, Oxford University and The British Library – with funding this time targetted at three partners, and the BL continuing as an unfunded advisory partner.

Preserv2 is well positioned to investigate these new levels of preservation service provision because it brings service providers of national and international standing, who can offer this range of capabilities, together with ROAR, which enables the services to monitor and interact with a large number of repositories.