Preserving the H-Net Email Lists: A Case Study in Trusted Digital Repository Assessment

In 2007, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) funded a two-year project to assess and improve the preservation of the academic email lists of the H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online consortium using the Trustworthy Repositories Audit and Certification (TRAC): Criteria and Checklist. The project demonstrated that the TRAC could be applied to a repository functioning as a live access system, although the installation of a separate, server-based preservation environment is recommended. Tools used in this study, including a framework for documenting digital preservation policies, are applicable to the preservation of email list archives as well as more complex data sets.