Preservation Policy

It is important to think about the long term future of the material entrusted to your repository. You should ensure that it continues to be readable as technology and file formats change, and as your organisational circumstances change. It may be necessary to establish different policies for different types of materials. Some content may need to be kept as deposited whilst other materials may need to reflect change. Learning and teaching materials in some subject areas are, by nature, more likely to be updated.

In the longer term, you may wish to use a preservation service, such as the one operated by the Centre for e-Research (CeRch) at King's College London (formerly AHDS).

The main elements of a preservation policy are:

Retention Period

• How long do you undertake to retain items for?
• Indefinitely or not?

Functional Preservation

• What are your intentions to ensure continued readability and usability of the items in your repository?
• What technical steps are you taking to fulfil your intentions, either by yourself or with partners?

File Preservation

• How are you backing up your repository files, in what form, and how often?

Withdrawal Policy

• Do you allow items to be withdrawn?
• If so, what reasons are acceptable?

Withdrawn Items

• How are items withdrawn?
• Are they deleted entirely, or do you just remove them from public view?
• Do the original URLs remain valid, and if so, do they point to 'tombstone' citations or to replacement items?

Version Control

• Do you allow items to be changed after they have been committed to the repository?
• Do you allow multiple versions?
• Can addenda and corrigenda be accommodated?

Closure Policy

• What would happen to material in your repository, should it be closed down for some reason?

Backup and File Restore

It is important, at the very least, to ensure that regular backups are made of the repository. This is usually carried out by IT systems administrators; a full backup should be made at least every week, with daily 'sinces' in between. Repository managers should also ensure that effective file restore procedures are in place with acceptable turnaround times. Ideally verficiation of backups should also be carried out.