Description (en)
For the past five years, Princeton University Library – specifically the University Archives – has striven to create a robust digital preservation program for its born-digital and digitized records. Due to lack of time and available staff, the Library decided that a third party digital preservation service would be the best solution. It could be acquired relatively quickly, and it wouldn’t require asking for funding to hire multiple dedicated staff to build a home-grown digital preservation system. Obtaining buy-in from stakeholders and finding a service that met Princeton’s needs proved to be a challenge, especially due to the sensitivity of student records in the collections, which would require a high level of privacy and encryption key maintenance in addition to standard data integrity and preservation processing tools. Throughout 2018, Princeton worked to partner with a service previously unavailable due to University data sovereignty requirements – Arkivum’s Perpetua – and work began to develop a Princetonspecific solution that met the needs of the University: Most importantly, geographically dispersed cloud storage locations, Princeton-based control over data integrity and authenticity checks, an encryption key management system for student records maintained by the vendor but managed by repository staff, and a reliable and quick exit strategy.