HathiTrust is pleased to announce its intention to become a “replicating node” in the Digital Preservation Network (DPN - www.dpn.org), contingent upon acceptable terms and conditions for doing so. HathiTrust is one of five institutions or consortia that have been collaborating over the past year to build a robust technological infrastructure for DPN, envisioned to be a broad, collaborative preservation safety net undergirding digital repositories, ensuring that “a single point of failure cannot jeopardize centuries of scholarship.”
“HathiTrust is deeply committed to the preservation of the scholarly record,” said Brian Schottlaender, chair of the HathiTrust Board of Governors. “Participation in DPN directly aligns with HathiTrust’s mission and goals, and connects HathiTrust with the wider network of dedicated preservation repositories, providing a stronger preservation infrastructure for us all.”
DPN replicating nodes together will maintain a “dark archive” of digital content submitted by DPN contributing nodes. The content will be replicated among the nodes with appropriate metadata and policies in place such that under certain conditions, content could be “brightened” or made available at a future time irrespective of who deposited the content.
DPN Director Steve Morales noted the importance of HathiTrust’s participation in the network: “HathiTrust is a certified preservation repository that has built a tremendous infrastructure and body of content over the last several years. Their experience in working at scale, and their expertise in the technical, policy, organizational and financial issues associated with long-term preservation are invaluable to the success of DPN.”
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About HathiTrust
HathiTrust is a community of research institutions working to permanently preserve and make accessible the scholarly and cultural record. HathiTrust grew from a 2007 U-M Library proposal that a consortium of institutions share a copy of their growing digital collections. Today, HathiTrust encompasses more than 80 institutional partners, and the digitized collections of some of the largest libraries in the world. http://www.hathitrust.org/
For more information about DPN, visit www.dpn.org.