MetaArchive Across Its Life Cycle: Change and Resilience in the Digital Preservation Ecosystem

Abstract

This panel discusses how community-owned and -led digital infrastructure can – and should – incorporate contingencies for sunsetting into sustainability planning and how to embody core values and address diverse member needs throughout the sunset process. Through its twenty years of operation, MetaArchive, the first and longest-running Private LOCKSS Network (PLN) has been consistently defining what it entails to be a digital preservation network created and hosted by and for memory organizations. Now, as the first PLN to undergo a deliberative sunset, we have the opportunity to share lessons in how endings can be carried out with as much intention and care as beginnings. In a time of field- and nation-wide change and transition, investments in shared infrastructure and inter-institutional communities of practice are more valuable than ever to building a resilient information ecosystem – only collectively can we guarantee access to our cultural heritage in the long-term. https://www.cni.org/topics/digital-preservation/metaarchive-across-its-life-cycle-change-and-resilience-in-the-digital-preservation-ecosystem