Future Proofing for IRs: A community-informed approach to preservation planning for Canadian scholarship

Institutional repositories (IRs) house unique content created by academic communities and hold a significant record of scholarship over time. While preservation of this content is vitally important, it often presents numerous challenges and specific considerations, including developing policies and procedures, building technical workflows, accommodating content with diverse file formats, and managing costs. As such, preservation in the IR context can be a complex, intimidating, or overwhelming endeavour, particularly for repository teams that may be under-resourced, lack in-house technical expertise, or face capacity issues. 

This poster addresses digital preservation needs and workflows in IRs through one solution to those shared challenges: Scholaris - a new Canadian national, opt-in shared repository service built on the DSpace platform and centrally hosted and managed by Scholars Portal at the University of Toronto. The poster shares results from a nation-wide needs assessment survey of repository managers conducted by the Scholaris Digital Preservation Expert Group this past winter to gather insights on current practices, capacity, and needs related to digital preservation, and describe how the group is using this valuable feedback to inform the development of flexible preservation pathways within the Scholaris service model and resources, such as explainers, toolkits, and documentation, to meet these needs and build capacity for digital preservation activities within the Canadian repository community.