20 QUESTIONS
Frequently Asked Questions
about
Academic Preservation Trust
September 26, 2013
1. What is Academic Preservation Trust?
The Academic Preservation Trust (APTrust) is a consortium committed to the creation and
management of a sustainable environment for digital preservation and aggregate
repository services for academic and research content.
2. What led to the formation of APTrust?
After many discussions about digital preservation, James Hilton, former University of
Virginia Vice-President and CIO, and Karin Wittenborg, Dean of Libraries and University
Librarian, convened colleagues from seven universities to discuss how they could 1)
digitally preserve the scholarly record in ways that would allow the digital copy to be the
copy of record; 2) provide sustained funding for digital preservation of the scholarly
record; and 3) collectively accomplish more than one institution or a small group could.
The group coalesced around a community approach and agreed to create a consortium
(APTrust) committed to building and managing an aggregated preservation repository
that would provide long-term preservation, aggregated content, disaster recovery, and
economies of scale.
The partners recognized that leveraging joint resources to build a community model
would demonstrate how much could be accomplished by working together.
3. What does APTrust hope to accomplish?
To become part of a long-term national digital preservation strategy for academic
institutions that are collecting born-digital “papers”, videos, audio, time-based artistic
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projects, electronic theses and dissertations, electronic records, social media, online
course modules, mixed-media scholarship, big data, and digital preservation copies of
print scholarship.
4. Why should APTrust be a top priority for academic libraries?
The current lack of a robust and sustainable solution for digital preservation is the single
greatest challenge facing research libraries and their parent institutions today. Natural
disasters, political upheavals, and the fragility of digital content, which can result in
corrupted and lost data, are reasons to develop a comprehensive national approach to
digital preservation.
APTrust will guard content against something unintended or unforeseen and will allow the
owner to restore lost content so that it can be used again.
“The scholarship that is being produced today, both print and digital, is at serious risk of
being lost forever to future generations.” James Hilton, former Vice-President and Chief
Information Officer at the University of Virginia.
5. What are APTrust values?
The Academic Preservation Trust consortium is committed to the creation and
management of a preservation repository that will aggregate academic and research
content from many institutions. Solutions will be based on respected open-source
technologies that are scalable, sustainable, and provide audit functionality.
At the local level, APTrust will provide a preservation environment for participating
members, including disaster recovery services. By leveraging the expertise and resources
of multiple institutions, APTrust will realize economies of scale and increase value for all
members.
As part of a national strategy for long-term preservation, the APTrust repository will serve
as a replicating node for the Digital Preservation Network (DPN).
Member institutions will work together to determine the shape of future services and best
practices as they align around solutions for the common good. Ultimately, APTrust will
enable academic libraries to protect the scholarship produced by the academy.
6. Why should my institution be a member of APTrust when we already have an
institutional repository?
An institutional repository is an excellent first step for digital preservation, but the
materials in it are at risk if the repository does not have a robust backup in the case of
failure due to human error, degradation of access content, technology failure, natural
disasters, etc.
7. Who are the APTrust member institutions?
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Columbia University
Indiana University
Johns Hopkins University
North Carolina State University
Notre Dame University
Stanford University
Syracuse University
University of Chicago
University of Cincinnati
University of Connecticut
University of Maryland
University of Miami
University of Michigan
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
University of Virginia
Virginia Tech University
8. How can my institution become a member?
If your institution is interested in contributing to the development phase of APTrust, we
are looking for additional member institutions at a cost of $20,000 annually over the next
2-3 years.
9. What are the membership benefits during this phase?
Deans, technologists, and content/preservation staff in your institution will be involved
with staff from all APTrust institutions and contribute to building a national preservation
strategy. Staff are exposed to others and grow in their knowledge of their field and of
digital preservation issues.
10. What is the technology behind APTrust?
The architecture was designed by University of Virginia technologists and DuraSpace,
which joined the UVA team in 2012. The Fedora-based aggregate repository will collect all
forms of content. The infrastructure is built in the Cloud using DuraCloud technologies
that include Cloudsync and ReplicationTaskSuite to stage content from Fedora and DSpace
instances, respectively. While the repository is Fedora-based, content can be ingested
from other repository types.
11. What does “a community based approach” mean?
By design, APTrust is a collaboration among deans of libraries, library and university
technologists and collections/preservation specialists and APTrust staff.
Together,
partners are shaping the technology, content considerations, and governance. During the
initial construction, member institutions are giving time, energy, and talent toward
building APTrust.
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12. What if my institution wants to contribute content but cannot participate in the
collaborative building stage?
APTrust will be seeking additional members sometime in 2014 who desire to deposit
content and take advantage of disaster recovery services.
13. When will I be able to submit digital materials to the APTrust?
Fully supported production services will be available in 2014.
14. What formats can I submit to APTrust?
All content types will be accommodated as demand for them is identified. Each institution
will determine its own content strategy and will be responsible for assuring permissions
for sharing or viewing the content. APTrust repository services will provide rights
management at the object level for permissions and for identifying whether the content is
destined for long-term storage in a DPN replicating node.
15. How much will my deposits cost annually?
Current member institutions are contributing $20,000 annually. The consortium and staff
are presently estimating annual costs for institutional content in the APTrust repository
after the development stage.
16. What is DPN (http://DPN.org) ?
o DPN is the administrative core of a national digital preservation network that is
growing across the country in universities and their libraries.
o DPN is writing the standards for digital materials that are permanently deposited
unless a catastrophic event occurs where the owners need to have their digital
materials restored.
o These materials will actually be permanently stored and replicated in a number of
digital repository nodes that will also preserve other materials and provide various
services for their particular constituencies.
o The repositories have dual roles: they are backups to one another for permanent
preservation storage, and they are trusted digital repositories with various services for
their constituencies.
o APTrust is one of the DPN nodes.
17. How does DPN connect to APTrust?
Materials deposited in APTrust may also be deposited permanently (no withdrawal
possible unless there is a catastrophe) through DPN. Content in APTrust may be
withdrawn by the owner.
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18. Do I need to be a member of DPN as well as APTrust?
If you want to deposit material permanently, your institution must be a member both of
DPN and APTrust or another node (see above). If not, membership in APTrust will suffice.
19. What services, other than preservation, does APTrust provide?
In 2014, APTrust will become operational and will accept content from member
institutions. Once content is accepted, the contributing institution will be able to use
APTrust for disaster recovery, that is, content can be restored to an institution in case of
disaster.
20. What might it provide in the future?
Future services might include hosted access in the event of a disaster recovery, format
migration, access services, and hosted repository services. Partner feedback and business
case considerations will be important drivers for new services.
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