Since 1996, the Internet Archive (IA) has provided storage, preservation, and access infrastructure and services to over 1,000 cultural heritage organizations around the world. It has also provided customized digital preservation services on a contractual basis to a handful of large institutions. In 2020, IA began building a more generalized digital preservation service in response to the needs of a broader range of institutions and to leverage IA’s self-owned data centers, non-profit cloud services, and demonstrated expertise in both small and petabyte-scale digital stewardship. This system is being developed in direct dialogue with 30+ organizations, including universities, public libraries, arts organizations, and cultural heritage organizations, over the course of the 2021 - 2022 year. This paper shares key takeaways from the information collected from this pre-pilot phase and serves as a lean landscape review of the current gaps within the digital preservation landscape, particularly as they relate to the distinct needs and goals of nonprofits, libraries, and cultural heritage organizations, that this service aims to address.

digital preservation, product development, archives, open infrastructure, sustainability

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