Library of Congress chooses four universities for digital preservation research

• By Joab Jackson
• Jun 15, 2004

Under the Library of Congress' $100 million National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program, four universities will develop a set of strategies and best practices.

The library is seeking ways to foster preservation and archiving of digital content, including Web sites, digital photographs, audio and video.

The four schools are Harvard University of Cambridge, Mass.; Johns Hopkins University of Baltimore; Old Dominion University of Norfolk, Va.; and Stanford University of Stanford, Calif. The one-year awards are valued at about $1 million each, said Martha Anderson, the library's digital project manager.

The universities will build prototype repositories using open-source and proprietary content management software, using a 12G digital archive of Sept. 11, 2001, materials collected by George Mason University of Fairfax, Va. They will also come up with new techniques for transferring large collections from one archive to another.

At the end of the research period, the library and the universities will jointly publish a report of current best practices and future areas of research. More information about the project is at www.digitalpreservation.gov.