Modelling curation and preservation levels for trustworthy digital repositories

Broadly defined, digital curation and preservation refer to a set of practices that ensure the long-term accessibility, usability, and understandability of digital assets for a defined community of users. These practices are managed and performed in sustainable organizational settings with clearly defined responsibilities, are governed by policies, and require that the repository actively addresses any factors – legal, organizational, financial, technical, or cultural – which might put access and use of digital assets at risk. 

Which specific practices are required to provide successful digital curation and preservation depends on a multiplicity of factors including the needs and 'knowledge base' of the users, the type of digital object to be preserved, and (re)use scenarios. Though there is no 'one-size-fits-all-approach' to curation and preservation, community agreement on the defining the levels of "care provided and the degree of responsibility taken by a repository or other data service" [1], is a helpful instrument in the management of heterogeneous collections, the development of preservation policies and practices, and the certification of trustworthy repositories. 

Thus, many repositories have heterogeneous collections and may choose different curation and preservation approaches for groups of assets based on archival value, mission, in-house expertise, available resources, etc. Repositories currently planning and developing a preservation capacity benefit from a concise definition of levels to aspire to. Likewise, certification of trustworthy digital repositories such as undertaken by the CoreTrustSeal requires the definition of a minimum level of curation and preservation that repositories must have reached to be in scope for certification as trustworthy digital repositories. 

This paper, presented at the PV2023 conference in May 2023, draws on the CoreTrustSeal Curation and Preservation Levels Discussion Paper [1] and feedback received as well as public responses of successful CoreTrustSeal applicants, to present a model for Levels of Curation and Preservation suitable for the purposes outlined above. 

[1] CoreTrustSeal Standards and Certification Board. (2022). Curation & Preservation Levels: CoreTrustSeal Discussion Paper (v01.00). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6908019, p. 3. Following the conference, Version 2 of the Discussion Paper was published: CoreTrustSeal Standards and Certification Board. (2023). Curation & Preservation Levels: CoreTrustSeal Discussion Paper (v02.00). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8083359