Digital Preservation Policy

Introduction

The Presbyterian Historical Society (PHS ) is the oldest denominational archives in the United States and serves as the national archives for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and many predecessor denominations. PHS’s mission is to leverage its collections and archival work to galvanize the transformative power of history in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and wider community. PHS accomplishes this by collecting, preserving, and sharing the story of the American Presbyterian and Reformed experience with Presbyterians, the scholarly community, and the general public.

Digital stewardship enables PHS to collect the intellectual and cultural heritage at the core of its mission while at the same time ensuring that it is accessible and held in trust for future use. This policy serves to formalize PHS’s ongoing commitment to the long-term preservation of its extensive and diverse digital assets and to communicate PHS’s strategy by providing a high-level understanding of how digital preservation activities will be organized, managed, and undertaken. The actions that flow from this document directly support PHS’s mission to gather and share a full record of the past and provide broad and equitable access to its collections and resources, which ultimately foster reconciliation and reparative work.

Scope

This policy applies to all preservation activities undertaken by PHS on the digital assets for which PHS is either the primary custodian or has entered into an agreement to preserve and/or provide access. The preservation activities undertaken by PHS may be described collectively as a digital preservation program. PHS creates digital assets through its digitization program, acquires digital assets through collection development, and receives transfers of digital records through its records management program. Acquisition and transfer decisions are governed by related policy documents, including the Collection Development Policy, Electronic Records Policy, and national agency retention schedules. The following items fall under the scope of this program and, in recognition of the varied nature of digital content, have been grouped into priority areas:

Priority 1: Born-digital assets The highest effort will be made to preserve accessioned records and personal papers for which no analog instance exists. This may include permanent records created by agencies and offices of the PC(USA) in the course of business, permanent records acquired from PC(USA) congregations and mid councils, materials acquired as part of collection development activities, metadata created for the intellectual control of PHS holdings, and digital resources collected by PHS that are unlikely to exist elsewhere.
Priority 2: Digitized assets where no available or stable analog resource exists Every reasonable step will be taken to preserve materials where the physical analog no longer exists or where re-digitization is difficult, costly, or impossible (e.g. analog resources that are physically unstable and where digitization would compromise the resource).
Priority 3: Digitized assets with a stable analog resource available Reasonable measures will be taken to extend the life of digital assets produced from readily available physical analogs and where the cost of re-digitizing has been weighed against the costs of preserving the surrogate. These include analog objects owned by PHS that are selected for digital conversion and digital objects for which PHS does not own the analog.
Priority 4: Subscription-based resources No steps will be taken to preserve materials not owned or directly controlled by PHS. Subscription-based digital resources are, instead, primarily managed by agreement with the publisher or vendor. PHS will negotiate such preservation agreements when developing subscription and license contracts with publishers and vendors.

Mandate

PHS’s mandate to preserve digital content, has the following administrative, legal, and ethical basis:

As the national archives of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), PHS collects organizational records of historical value, regardless of format, from congregations, mid-councils, and national agencies as mandated by the Book of Order (G.3.0107).
PHS’s Collection Development Policy prioritizes the preservation of personal papers from prominent Presbyterians and ecumenical leaders and records of some Presbyterian and ecumenical organizations. When PHS secures material that falls within its collecting scope, it is obligated to preserve the materials as part of its commitments to donors which are outlined in the Deed of Gift.
The PHS Strategic Goals and Objectives 2023-2025 identifies preservation as one of four key areas in which PHS must excel to effectively fulfil its mission.
The Organization for Mission provides for the administration of Records and History by PHS. Furthermore, as part of the Office of the General Assembly and in keeping with the Manual of the General Assembly, PHS assists the Stated Clerk in fulfilling their recordkeeping responsibilities.
The general purpose of records management as instilled in the role of the Stated Clerk and carried out through PHS is to provide the records necessary to support the efficient continuation of the PC(USA)’s activities, including but not limited to the production and acquisition of reliable records for legal purposes. In this manner, PHS supports the PC(USA), A Corporation’s legal function as it facilitates the management of the church’s corporate affairs in keeping with the Bylaws of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), A Corporation.
PHS adheres to the principles of the archival profession as articulated in the Society of American Archivists’ Code of Ethics, which calls archivists to “protect all materials for which they are responsible” and to “take steps to minimize the natural physical deterioration of records and implement specific security policies to protect digital records.”

Challenges

Digital preservation is defined as “the series of management policies and activities necessary to ensure the enduring usability, authenticity, discoverability and accessibility of content over the very long term.” There are, however, challenges to implementing an effective program that achieves the goals outlined in this definition. These include:

Technological Innovation: The technology that enables digital content to be created and accessed is constantly evolving. This includes but is not limited to development of new types of content, competing applications and formats, storage media and environments, and security vulnerabilities. Establishing a program that can respond to these changes is challenging.
Rapid Growth of Data: As information technologies have evolved, shifting paper records to digital records, the amount of data created has outpaced preservation capacities. Digital information is created much more easily and rapidly than paper. For this reason, selection criteria must be reviewed regularly and weighed against available resources.
Resource Limitations: Digital preservation is a costly endeavor. Unlike analog collections where benign neglect can be sufficient, digital content can degrade and dependencies can become obsolete. Establishing a program that meets best practice for file storage, replication, monitoring, and migration, as well as maintaining the systems that provide intellectual control and access to digital assets, requires monetary investment in technological infrastructure.
Expertise: Digital preservation is a relatively new field and is, itself, evolving. Standards, best practices, and tools are in development and maturing at various rates. Ensuring adequate staffing levels and that staff can monitor best practices and, when appropriate, test and implement new strategies requires monetary investment in personnel.
Organizational Continuity: As administrative personnel or organizational structure changes, support for digital preservation must remain constant. This requires advocacy so that administrators understand the significance of digital preservation and have a sense of the resources needed to sustain a program.
Communication and Training: Staff across the PC(USA) may contribute directly or indirectly to the broader digital preservation function through decisions made when records are created and maintained or as records are transferred to archival custody. Building awareness of best practices in digital recordkeeping, working with those who select electronic systems early in the digital content life cycle, and strengthening working relationships with IT can improve long-term outcomes.
Access and Security: Digital content must be safeguarded to prevent unauthorized access and to protect the privacy and intent of content creators as governed by state or federal laws, licensing agreements, donor agreements, or internal policy. Ensuring that security protocols are in place and kept up to date for applications, networks, devices and even users may mitigate security risks.

Operational Principles

Due to technological challenges and limited resources, perfect, unbroken access to digital content cannot be guaranteed. However, PHS will implement a variety of technical strategies as part of its digital preservation program. Undergirding these strategies are the following operational principles:

Standards and Best Practices: Professional standards and best practices related to the creation, maintenance, storage, and delivery of digital content and metadata will be monitored and implemented. When needed, new strategies will be tested and incorporated.
Access: Preservation activities will be performed, unless explicitly stated otherwise, with the understanding that selected digital content is intended for permanent retention and thus stewarded with the goal of providing long-term access.
Appraisal: Appropriate selection criteria will be applied to digital content using existing collection development policies, records retention schedules, or other agreements. When necessary, de-selection will be undertaken.
Sustainability: Reasonable expectations of the requisite resources to sustain the program will be applied. Reliable, cost-effective storage and scalable, flexible, robust infrastructure will be prioritized and reevaluated over time.
Collaboration and Partnerships: Third-party services or collaborative partners will be evaluated according to their potential benefits, commitment to existing standards or best practice, and long-term viability.
Authenticity and Cybersecurity: Digital content will be managed to ensure that it is unaltered and uncorrupted, that provenance and chain-of-custody are tracked, and that it is safeguarded from unauthorized access and use.
Legal Compliance: Copyright, intellectual property rights, and other legal or ethical considerations will be respected and upheld. Rights management actions and rights information will be documented where practicable.
Documentation: Policies, procedures, and practices governing digital preservation strategies and actions will be maintained and kept up to date.
Metadata: Digital assets are stored with appropriate levels of descriptive, technical, and preservation metadata.
Training: Support for the purpose of developing staff expertise will be provided in order to inform and advance the program.

Strategies

With the goal of enabling the usability of its digital assets over time while retaining the qualities of authenticity, accuracy, and functionality deemed both essential and feasible to the assets, PHS has identified the following technical strategies:

Selection and Appraisal: File formats that are readable or usable at the time of transfer will be evaluated. Note: The ability to preserve any file will rely on how well the format is understood and documented, and the ability to access and view any file will depend on the existence of an application or emulation that can render it. Applications that create records, storage environments, and executable programs will not be accepted.
File Normalization: Some filetypes may be normalized to a non-proprietary, widely adopted, preservation-friendly format.
Metadata: Digital assets will be described in a catalog or archival information system to document provenance and the context of creation and to facilitate access and use. Typically, this will include collection or series level information through basic attributes such as creator, title, and date. Additional metadata about the files will be maintained alongside the digital assets in preservation storage. Digitized assets will be created with supporting metadata. Typically, this will include item-level descriptive information.
Fixity Checks: At minimum, MD5 or SHA256 checksums will be calculated and recorded for each file upon transfer to preservation storage or digital asset management system. Fixity checks to monitor file integrity on digital assets in preservation storage will be performed as needed and when content is moved or migrated . Fixity checks to monitor file integrity on digital assets stored within the digital asset management system are performed automatically according to the system’s schedule (currently, every 90 days).
Processing: Files may be processed prior to their transfer to preservation storage or ingested into a digital repository system. Activities may include scanning for viruses; deleting out-of-scope content; renaming or restructuring files; running file format validation; transforming file formats through normalization; or generating descriptive, structural, or technical metadata, including file characterization.
Backups: Digital assets will be securely stored and routinely backed up. Some content may be fully replicated for redundancy.

Due to limited resources and the complex nature of digital material, PHS cannot preserve all born-digital content it acquires to an ideal or optimal level. Instead, staff make decisions about preservation actions so that the resources used to preserve born-digital content reflect the appraised value of that content. The following tiered levels correlate to PHS’s preservation commitments:

LEVEL 1: Basic or Bit-Level Preservation
This level supports best efforts to maintain the integrity of the original digital object as it is received by PHS. Generally, this includes the following actions:

Persistent identifier assigned
Descriptive Metadata created
One preservation copy in secure, primary cloud storage (Azure) with periodic snapshots scheduled

LEVEL 2: Extended Preservation
This middle level supports best efforts to maintain the integrity and understandability of the informational content of the original digital object. Generally, this includes the following actions:

Persistent identifier assigned
Virus check of files on transfer (if records are not from PC(USA) systems)
Descriptive Metadata created, including directory list and file identification based on file extension
Problem files normalized
Fixity checked when needed
One preservation copy in secure, primary cloud storage (Azure) with periodic snapshots scheduled

LEVEL 3: Advanced Preservation
This highest level of preservation supports best efforts to maintain the integrity, understandability, and renderability of the original digital object. Generally, this includes the following actions:

Persistent identifier assigned
Virus check of files on transfer (if records are not from PC(USA) systems)
Descriptive Metadata created, including directory list
Technical metadata created, including file validation
All files normalized
Migration of files when necessary
Fixity checked when needed
Versioning when appropriate
One preservation copy in secure, primary cloud storage (Azure), one access copy in secure, primary cloud storage (Azure) with periodic snapshots scheduled

Stakeholders

Digital preservation is a shared responsibility and often requires collaboration among stakeholders. Although contributions may vary, stakeholders include:

Administrative Leadership: It is the responsibility of individuals in decision-making roles to support an environment in which digital preservation is regarded as a strategic interest and work to ensure resources are allocated to maintain a digital preservation program.
Internal Collaborators: It is the responsibility of various individuals and units, primarily within PHS, to develop, maintain, and implement a digital preservation strategy.
Content Creators: It is the responsibility of creators to steward digital content prior to its transfer to PHS. Through communication and training, creators can help facilitate a seamless transition between active management and preservation management.
External Collaborators: Individuals and groups who may or may not be affiliated with PHS may be responsible for supporting digital preservation through consultation, education, financial support, or services.
User Communities: End users, such as researchers and PC(USA) staff who are impacted by the longevity and availability of digital content, provide evidence of use and may have the opportunity to evaluate accessibility of digital content. These individuals may further serve as natural advocates for a digital preservation program.

Policy Review

This policy is a living document that underpins essential activities at PHS. It will be evaluated regularly to ensure that implemented strategies continue to support PHS’s mission, use resources in a cost-effective manner, and adapt appropriately to evolving technologies. This evaluation will be completed at least once every three years or as conditions change within PHS’s operating context.

Date/Authors

This document was created by a working group consisting of Allison Davis, Kyna Herzinger, Nick Skaggs, Natalie Shilstut, and David Staniunas. It was approved by Executive Director Nancy Taylor on Dec. 18, 2023.

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