Digital Preservation Practices and Challenges at University Archives in the United States
ABSTRACT
University archives conduct digital preservation to provide access to their valuable digital materials. This comparative study explores digital preservation practices and challenges encountered at doctoral universities with a very high research activity (R1), doctoral universities with a high research activity (R2), and doctoral/professional universities (D/PU) in the United States that were listed on the 2021 edition of the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. A total of 141 archivists at these institutions completed an online survey about the important aspects of digital preservation including staffing, digital preservation systems and tools, National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) assessment, funding, infrastructure, and collaboration. Statistical analyses reveal some differences across the archives examined in many of the digital preservation aspects such as staffing, systems and tools, and financial needs. Staffing and funding are the most problematic digital preservation challenges facing university archives. Based on the findings of this study, the authors address key questions for future research.
Digital preservation continues to be a critical issue that most university archives in the United States face. As defined by the “Dictionary of Archives Terminology” from the Society of American Archivists (SAA), digital preservation is “the management and protection of digital information to ensure authenticity, integrity, reliability, and long-term accessibility.”1 Any digital preservation program relies on factors embedded in this definition. The number of staff at an archives, the education of the staff, administrative support, and long-term technological investments all play vital roles in how confidently an archives preserves its digital content. The absence of these vital factors limits the ability of archivists to effectively preserve digital content at their institutions, which may lead to the loss of important cultural heritage documentation. No study has offered a comparative analysis of the challenges faced at different levels of universities in the United States.
A gap in the literature exists concerning digital preservation conducted on a nationwide scale in the United States. This study investigates digital preservation practices and the challenges encountered at university archives of R1, R2, and D/PU universities listed in the 2021 edition of the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. Although several studies have investigated digital preservation practices of archives, advancements and changes in technology make this a topic worth revisiting.2 Recent coverage of the topic will provide a better understanding of the archives’ adaptability to these changes. This article presents the findings of a research project that considered these issues. In the project, we sought to answer four research questions:
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What are the digital preservation practices conducted by university archives in the United States?
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Do digital preservation practices conducted at university archives differ based on the ranking of their academic institutions?
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What are the primary challenges to digital preservation that university archives face?
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Do digital preservation challenges encountered at university archives differ based on the ranking of their academic institutions?
By answering these questions, our study aims to assist similar institutions, nationally and globally, by learning from the experience of the archives examined and recognizing challenges encountered. This study assists in sharing knowledge among university archivists to promote digital preservation at their institutions and professional networks.
Literature Review
There has been no shortage of discourse about digital preservation within the archival community. Despite being discussed and researched by archivists for over twenty years,3 digital preservation continues to generate research interests among archival scholars and practitioners.4 In recent years, these conversations have expanded to address specific types of formats, such as email, web archiving, and social media.5 Some archivists have applied digital forensic techniques to their digital preservation workflows.6 As will be the focus of the research project discussed in this article, some of the studies on digital preservation have identified barriers that archivists encounter when working to preserve digital content, such as administrative support,7 personnel,8 finances,9 and technology.10
Several studies have identified administrative support as a significant factor for successful digital preservation programs.11 In 2021, the NDSA Staffing Survey Working Group conducted its third benchmarking study examining digital preservation staffing and skills of archivists at archives around the world. Based on the responses from the 269 participants (the majority of which were from academic archives or libraries in the United States), the top challenges for digital preservation include senior-level support and collaboration across departments and divisions.12 Daniel Dorner made a similar finding in his examination of government organizations in New Zealand. Based on the data from his survey, “insufficient organizational awareness of digital preservation was ranked as the greatest threat to digital material.”13
These studies also point to personnel, or staffing, playing a vital role in these programs. For example, in their study of fifty-two Canadian memory institutions, Grant Hurley and Kathleen Shearer reported many staffing challenges including lack of funding for new positions for digital preservation, staff skills and knowledge, and availability of resources for professional development and training.14 Likewise, the NDSA Staffing Survey Working Group's report shows that staffing is the number one challenge for respondents, ahead of “sustained fiscal/budgetary support.”15 Moreover, one of the final questions of the survey asked, “What is one thing your organization could do to improve digital preservation?,” and the most common response pertained to hiring more staff and “more staff dedicated specifically to digital preservation.”16 Other studies have made similar findings.17
Funding is the lifeline for digital preservation practices; without it, archives cannot hire staff with the appropriate knowledge and skills to manage digital content, and archives cannot purchase systems and software to ingest, hold, and provide access to digital content. Studies often point to financial limitations as being one of the biggest, if not the biggest, hurdles for archives to overcome when needing to ensure long-term access to their digital content.18 Yuan Li and Meghan Banach surveyed digital preservation practices at seventy-two institutional repositories of academic libraries and found that many of them suffer from lack of sustainable funding and adequate staffing that hinders their ability to effectively conduct digital preservation projects.19 Archives are not immune to preservation pitfalls that result from inadequate funding. In a 2008 study, Nancy Maron examined the attitudes of 1,371 library directors at four-year higher education institutions in the United States concerning electronic journal preservation, and a majority of the respondents indicated that they did not participate in electronic journal preservation primarily due to the lack of urgency and budgetary concerns.20
Technology has proven to be a catch-22 for archivists, and the technological challenges that hinder digital preservation have been the focus of many studies.21 On one hand, digital preservation cannot be completed without software, programs, and storage space, but on the other hand, the technological landscape is constantly shifting and the rising cost of resources (even if they are developed inhouse or through open sourcing) bring about new challenges for archivists.22 Studies have gathered data about the resources used by archivists to conduct digital preservation. For example, Matt Gorzalski's survey of four-year public universities and colleges in the midwestern United States found that a majority of institutions use a combination of homegrown, open-source, and propriety tools without relying on a single one of them to manage born-digital records.23 BitCurator and Archive-IT are most frequently adopted by these institutions for acquisition, ingest, and preservation.24 Hurley and Shearer explored digital preservation at fifty-two Canadian memory institutions and revealed that Archivematica is the most popular preservation tool, whereas BitCurator is the most commonly reported digital forensics tool.25 Besides systems and tools, Dorner mentions that insufficient storage space is a significant challenge that threatens digital preservation at government organizations in New Zealand.26 Kay Reinhart, Patrice-Andre Pud'homme, and Andrew Huot best summarize the state of digital preservation with regard to changing technologies: “Institutions are between a rock and a hard place when facing rapidly changing technologies and the sheer volume of digital creation.”27
Methodology
This is a comparative study with a quantitative research method that reviews digital preservation practices conducted by academic institutions. For this study, we targeted doctoral universities with very high research activity (R1), doctoral universities with high research activity (R2), and doctoral/professional universities (D/PU) that were listed on the 2021 edition of the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education.28 We focused on these archives because, according to the 2021 Staffing Survey Report by the National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA)29 and the A*CENSUS II All Archivists Survey Report,30 most respondents work at academic institutions located in the United States. By focusing on archives at R1, R2, and D/PU universities, we believed that we could obtain a thorough understanding of the salient digital preservation challenges that occur in most types of academic archives.
According to the Carnegie Classification, there are 466 universities in the United States listed as R1, R2, and D/PU institutions.31 To collect our data, we visited the websites of these universities to locate the archives’ websites and contact information for each director. We used Microsoft Excel to record this data. We selected only universities with English-language websites that both have archives and include visible contact information. Our final sample contained 145 R1 universities, 126 R2 universities, and 120 D/PU universities for a total of 391 universities.
We adopted a quantitative research design using an online survey to collect data.32 We used the Qualtrics33 platform to design the preliminary version of the survey. We requested feedback on an early version of the survey from three US archivists specializing in digital preservation, and they helped us improve our questions and survey design. The final version of the survey consisted of four main sections: consent form, archives’ demographic data, digital preservation practices conducted, and digital preservation challenges that archivists have encountered.
The survey consisted of twenty-three questions (see Appendix A) and included different types of questions such as Likert matrix table (5-point), multiple choice, rank order, and text entry. Except for the opening consent form question, all questions in the survey were optional. We distributed the survey using Qualtrics's email distribution tool to send personalized invitation emails to the target sample. We collected responses from January 11, 2023, until February 16, 2023. Of the 391 archives invited to complete the survey, 141 archivists agreed to take it, for a response rate of 36%. We used the Qualtrics platform and Microsoft Excel to analyze the data.
Limitations
This project was not without its limitations. First, the study collected data only from archives at R1, R2, and D/PU academic institutions. Therefore, the findings cannot be generalized to all university archives or other types of archives, such as community archives or historical societies. Despite this limitation, archives at R1 and R2 institutions may be considered the bellwether of the archival profession. As we will discuss, the digital preservation systems and tools used by these institutions may assist other types of archives with their digital preservation efforts. Second, the survey did not focus on specific digital preservation trends, such as web archiving or preserving social media, which did not come up in any of the survey responses. Instead, we sought to conduct a broad investigation about digital preservation practices and challenges at university archives. Third, a fairly high number of participants dropped out of the survey. The survey started with 141 respondents who agreed to the consent form, but only 92 respondents completed the final question. Several reasons may have contributed to the respondents not completing the survey, such as the length of the survey and some confusion as to whether the questions should be answered in the context of born-digital or digitized content. Also, some participants may have questioned the relevance of the survey to their institution. For example, Respondent 25 (who completed the survey) wrote, “Our [library name] performs no digital preservation activities, although we have a digital repository… . Several questions in this survey do not allow for that possibility so my answers are misleading.” In other words, despite receiving input from three professional archivists (all of whom were from institutions that are actively engaged in digital preservation practices) about the survey, we did not include question options for archivists who are either not performing digital preservation activities or doing so on a limited scale.
Findings and Discussion
Demographics
The archives’ demographic data focused on 8 measurements: geographical location, university ranking, university type, full-time staff members, part-time staff members, paid student workers, volunteers, and size of digital collections. We received the most responses from archives in Texas (11 responses), followed by 8 responses from California, 7 from New York, and 6 responses each from Illinois, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. We did not receive any responses from archivists in Alaska, Arizona, Louisiana, New Hampshire, Puerto Rico, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
We received responses from 59 (46%) archives located at R1 universities, 40 (31%) archives at R2 universities, and 30 (23%) archives at D/PU universities. A total of 129 respondents specified their type of academic institution, with 77 (60%) universities being public and 52 (40%) private nonprofit.
In terms of staffing, 127 respondents reported the number of full-time staff members at their archives. Most respondents at R1 (87%) universities indicated that their archives have 4 or more full-time staff members, whereas 86% of the respondents from D/PU universities revealed that their archives have only 1 or 2 staff members. Curiously, based on the responses from R2 institutions, there is no clear pattern of full-time staff members hired (see Table 1). A chi-square test revealed a p value of less than .00001, indicating a statistically significant relationship between the institution ranking and the number of full-time staff members hired by the archives. Our analysis of the 128 responses about the number of part-time staff members revealed that many of the archives at R1 (58%), R2 (73%), and D/PU (76%) universities do not hire part-time staff members. Instead, these academic institutions lean more on hiring paid student workers. Of the 129 responses, most of the archives at R1 (53%) and R2 (33%) universities hire 5 or more students, whereas most archives at D/PU (33%) universities hire only 1 student. A chi-square test revealed a p value of .000103, indicating a statistically significant relationship between the institution ranking and the number of student workers hired by the archives. Most of the archives hosted by R1 (71%), R2 (73%), and D/PU (60%) universities did not recruit volunteers. Chi-square tests showed that there are no statistically significant relationships between the institution ranking and each of the numbers of the part-time staff members (p value of .518) and volunteers (p value of .338) working at the archives.
The data show that archives at D/PU institutions exhibit greater staffing challenges than those archives at R1 or R2 universities. As discussed in more detail following, this could account for the lack of resources that archives at D/PU institutions are able to devote to digital preservation given that solo archivists must complete all other archival functions.
We asked respondents to estimate the approximate size of digital files stored by their archives. This multiple-choice question allowed respondents to choose “gigabyte,” “terabyte,” or “petabyte” and enter the numeric value in the text box given to each choice. We received responses to this question from 89 respondents. Seventy-two (81%) respondents selected “terabyte,” 15 (17%) selected “gigabyte,” and 2 selected “petabyte” (2%). Most archives at R1 (87%), R2 (85%), and D/PU (65%) universities reflected digital files in the terabyte size range (see Table 2). It is surprising that over a third of the D/PU respondents indicated that they only have gigabytes of stored digital content, which may indicate that these archives have not acquired more digital files because they lack the capacity to maintain them. As will be discussed later, the inevitable growth of digital content poses serious consequences for institutions, especially archives found in D/PU universities.
Respondents reported some challenges related to storage capacities dedicated to digital preservation projects at their archives. For example, Respondent 8 said, “Recently our institution's digital storage limits were reduced, furthering the challenge” to indicate that less storage is available in their archives. Also, Respondent 42 explained that audiovisual media consumes a great amount of their archives’ storage space: “The content that we have preserved, so far, has heavily leaned toward A/V materials including digitized video deliverables with durations up to 5 hours that consume 600+GB of storage for a single file.”
Staffing
The survey inquired about the number of full- and part-time staff members who conduct digital preservation at the archives. We received 105 responses for the number of full-time staff members and 104 responses for the number of part-time staff members. A cross-tabulation test (see Table 3) revealed that most archives at R1 (42%), R2 (63%), and D/PU (64%) universities have only 1 full-time staff member dedicated to digital preservation. Most of the archives at R1 (80%), R2 (85%), and D/PU (76%) universities do not hire any part-time staff. The data did not confirm a statistically significant relationship between the number of full-time staff members who work on digital preservation and the institution ranking (p value of .0316). Similarly, there was no statistically significant relationship between the number of part-time staff members who work on digital preservation and the institution ranking (p value of .533). Respondents reported a shortage of staff in the archives’ staff to conduct digital preservation. For example, Respondent 16 said, “In our libraries the DP [digital preservation] does not reside in the archives, rather in Digital Initiatives where a single staff member spends 10% of their time on [digital preservation].” Respondent 107 made a similar remark, stating that “we already have too few FTEs being responsible for too many projects,” and Respondent 9 added “I have neither the manpower, time nor institutional support to conduct digital preservation on a large scale.” Our findings are consistent with Hurley and Shearer's findings that most Canadian memory institutions have low staffing levels for digital preservation with an average of 1.14 full-time employees at many of these institutions, whereas 62% of them have less than 1 full-time employee.34
The survey included 2 questions about the degree of collaboration that archives have with other university departments to conduct digital preservation. Of the 106 respondents who indicated whether their archives collaborate with other university departments to conduct digital preservation, 66 (62%) indicated that they do. Among those archives that collaborate with other university departments, a cross-tabulation test revealed that archives at R1 (78%) universities show more collaborations compared to those at R2 (50%) and D/PU (52%) universities. This finding is consistent with Hurley and Shearer's stating that 63% of the respondents from the Canadian memory institutions reported that digital preservation activities are conducted by more than one unit or department at their institutions.35
Sixty-four respondents specified the departments that their archives collaborate with to conduct digital preservation. An analysis of their textual inputs revealed that most collaborations are made with a library department, university IT, or academic departments. For example, Respondent 27 said, “Library IT and Campus IT” and Respondent 13 commented, “My only help is from the IR [institutional repository] group within the library,” which implies that this archives may benefit from additional collaborations but has not been able to establish these connections. This study did not investigate the reasons for collaboration, so it is unclear whether archives establish collaborations due to lack of staff skills or of technological infrastructure.
Systems and Tools
We sought to understand what digital preservation systems and tools university archives use. Each respondent was able to select multiple systems and add one or more textual input for the “Other. Please specify” choice. We received 184 selections from 99 respondents who specified the digital preservation system(s) that they use at their archives. Of these 99 respondents, 49 of them indicated that they use 2 or more systems, 11 use 3 systems, and 9 use 4 or more. Among more popular, or well-known, digital preservation systems, such as Archivematica and Preservica, the list of options also intentionally included nondigital preservation systems such as SharePoint/OneDrive. We received 32 textual inputs for the “Other. Please specify” choice referring to other systems (see Appendix B for a complete list of the responses), including those not specially designed for digital preservation such as “Google Drive” (Respondents 30, 89, and 120) and “Dropbox” (Respondent 50).
We included SharePoint/OneDrive as an option to investigate whether archives use nondigital preservation systems to meet their digital preservation needs. Surprisingly, 14 respondents selected this option; however, of these 14 archives, only 2 selected it as the only system being used at their institutions. For example, Respondent 46 selected homegrown (developed in-house), Digital Commons, and SharePoint/OneDrive, and Respondent 126 selected Archivematica, Digital Commons, DSpace Direct, SharePoint/OneDrive, and Other (to which they added Islandora, Amazon Glacier, and Chronopolis). In most cases, a file share system such as SharePoint/OneDrive, GoogleDrive, or Dropbox, is used in conjunction with other systems, not as the sole means for storing and managing digital records.
Several participants also added comments about their lack of a preservation system. Respondent 15 said, “We have no official digital preservation system but use university server storage,” which confirms that nonspecialized digital preservation systems are used to store digital collections. Likewise, Respondent 114 noted, “We do digital preservation on a shoestring budget, using Amazon Glacier for very basic storage/file fixity work, rather than a dedicated archival solution” to report the absence of specialized digital preservation systems. This confirmed our assumption that archives might adopt systems that are not specially designed for digital preservation purposes, but, in most instances, these are used with other systems. However, Respondent 86 stated that “We are very, very behind when it comes to utilizing the above and doing digital preservation in general,” which shows the struggle in dealing with digital preservation systems at the respondent's archives.
As seen in Table 4, a cross-tabulation test revealed that among all the digital preservation systems listed, only 6 choices received 10% or more of total selections: homegrown (developed in-house) (48%), other systems (38%), Digital Commons (31%), Archivematica (14%), SharePoint/OneDrive (14%), and Preservica (12%). Most archives at R1 (57%) and R2 (40%) universities use a homegrown system, whereas most of the archives at D/PU (52%) universities use Digital Commons. Among all the digital preservation systems, chi-square tests confirmed statistically significant relationships between institution ranking and each of Archivematica and Digital Commons with a p value of .00395 and a p value of .00245, respectively. Respondents provided other digital preservation systems for the “Other. Please specify” choice with redundancies across some of the received responses (see Appendix B for a complete list of systems). Several factors may contribute to the disparity among archives for the digital preservation system(s) that they use. First and foremost, funding plays a significant role in what digital preservation systems an archives uses. Even if an archives invests in an open-source system, such as Archivematica, implementing it requires a significant amount of staff time or IT capabilities, which are likely to be lacking at most D/PU institutions. Second, these archives may also have a more tenuous relationship with their IT department that limits their ability to invest in systems and tools for digital preservation activities. Finally, it remains unknown whether archivists at D/PU institutions require robust systems, such as Archivematica, because systems such as Digital Commons are sufficient for managing their digital content. Another possibility is that these systems are simply what are available to them via their institution's library or IT department.
To our surprise, most of the archives at R1 and R2 universities indicated that they use homegrown systems.36 Our study did not investigate this option in more detail, but it could imply that the available digital preservation systems do not satisfy the archives’ needs or meet their criteria, or that this is a decision based on available financial resources. Digital Commons is preferred by most archives at D/PU universities that completed the survey, but it is not a specialized digital preservation system; rather, it is an institutional repository software for hosting the research and scholarly work of an institution.37
While digital preservation systems assist in managing and maintaining authentic digital records, a variety of tools help archivists investigate, manage, and preserve their digital content. We asked respondents to specify the digital preservation tools they use at their archives. Each respondent was able to select multiple answers with the ability to enter a textual input to each one of the 3 “Other. Please specify” choices. Like the previous question about digital preservation systems, most of these respondents selected more than 1 tool, with nearly 80% selecting 2 or more tools, and 56% selecting 4 or more tools. Five respondents indicated that they use 10 or more tools. On average, respondents from R1 universities selected 5 tools, respondents from R2 universities chose 3 tools, and all but 1 of the respondents from D/PU universities indicated that they use only 1 tool (the exception indicated that their archives uses 5 tools). The discrepancy in the number of tools used by archivists at the 3 institutional rankings may be the result of archivists’ lack of awareness of the different tools, their ability to properly install and implement the tool(s), and/or their lack of need for additional tools for their digital preservation purposes.
A cross-tabulation test (see Table 5) revealed that 10 tools received 10% or more of the total selections: BitCurator (46%), BagIt (41%), Fixity (32%), ExifTool (28%), Forensic Toolkit (28%), Bagger (24%), Karen's Directory Printer (18%), JHOVE (16%), File Information Tool Set (15%), and Format Identification for Digital Objects (11%). BitCurator was the most common digital preservation tool adopted by the archives at R1 (56%) and R2 (42%) universities, whereas archives at D/PU universities reflected an equal preference (11%) for BagIt, BitCurator, ExifTool, Fixity, and JHOVE. Chi-square tests did not confirm statistically significant relationships between each digital preservation tool and the institution ranking. For the “Other. Please specify” choices, we received 48 textual inputs from respondents mentioning other digital preservation tools that were not listed in our survey, whereas several tools were mentioned more than once (see Appendix C for a complete list of tools).
With one exception, our findings regarding digital preservation systems and tools confirm those reported by earlier studies. For example, Gorzalski describes Archive-IT and BitCurator as the most frequent tools adopted for acquisition, ingest, and preservation by Midwest institutions, whereas Archivematica and Preservica are underrepresented.38 Hurley and Shearer report Archivematica as the most common preservation processing tool used by Canadian memory institutions.39 In our study, Archivematica and Preservica have more representation, especially by the archives at R1 universities, but they are not the most popular systems. The respondents in our study reflect more reliance on homegrown digital preservation systems.
Assessment
One way to measure an archives’ achievement in conducting digital preservation is by using the NDSA's Levels of Digital Preservation (Levels).40 The Levels consists of 5 functional areas: storage, integrity, control, metadata, and content, with 4 levels (i.e., Level 1: know your content, Level 2: protect your content, Level 3: monitor your content, and Level 4: sustain your content) for each functional area.41 The higher the ranking in each area, the more mature and sustainable the preservation program is in that area. The assessment provides the archivists data that identify the digital preservation capabilities of their institutions and helps them identify gaps in their digital preservation programs that need to be filled.
Ninety-two respondents answered the question that asked if an NDSA assessment had been conducted at their archives, of whom only 27 (29%) respondents indicated “yes.” Our findings slightly contradict the 2021 Staffing Survey Report that shows the majority of respondents performing the NDSA Levels of Digital Preservation assessment framework.42 As seen in Table 6, archives at R1 institutions conducted most of the assessments (46%). We did not inquire why the participants had not conducted an assessment at their archives.
We asked the participants who had conducted an NDSA assessment of their archives to indicate what rankings they achieved for each of the 5 functional areas. All 27 respondents who completed the previous question answered this question. On average, participants ranked themselves at a Level 2 for all functional areas, and based on the mean score for each area, Content received the highest score (2.41), followed by Control (2.37), Storage (2.33), and Integrity (2.22). Metadata received the lowest assessment with a mean score of 2.19. Only 2 of the 27 participants assessed their archives at a Level 4 for all the 5 functional areas (both participants were from R1 institutions). Three participants (2 R1 archives and 1 R2 archives) ranked their institutions at a Level 1 for all 5 functional areas. Due to the lack of data for this question, we could not make any comparative analysis among the different types of universities, though we were surprised by the high percentage of archivists from D/PU institutions who had not conducted an assessment (see Table 6). This was most likely the result of a lack of staffing among these archives. As previously mentioned, 24% of D/PU institutions that responded to the survey did not have a full-time staff member devoted to digital preservation, and 64% only had 1 full-time staff member (see Table 3).
We asked all participants to rank the functional areas of the assessment according to their own digital preservation activities, even if they had completed an NDSA assessment. Eighty-one respondents answered this question. Participants ranked Storage as the area of most concern (58% of the respondents identified this as either their first or second biggest challenge), which is not surprising because most participants indicated that they have terabytes of data, and it is safe to assume the volume will continue to increase. Participants ranked Content as the area of least concern (52% of the respondents ranked this as their fourth or fifth most concerning challenge), implying that most participants know what digital content they have and have some way to monitor and provide access to it. Despite these rankings, we received a comment from Respondent 25, who said that “We score zero in every category in NDSA's Levels of Digital Preservation,” indicating that some archives lack even the most basic infrastructure for digital preservation.
Challenges
Digital preservation comprises a complex combination of activities. Some of these activities might be more problematic than others. Based on the literature, we identified 7 key activities of digital preservation and asked respondents to rank them in terms of their difficulty. We also included an eighth statement, “Other. Please specify,” that allowed textual inputs from respondents to facilitate reporting additional activities. As shown in Table 7, of the 86 responses we received for this question, performing digital preservation strategies, such as migration, emulation, or refreshing, was ranked as the most difficult activity, whereas selecting materials for digital preservation was deemed the least challenging activity.
The data show that archives at D/PU institutions have a slightly harder time ingesting files into their systems, but this may be because archives at D/PU universities are less likely to have formally established digital preservation programs, as well as specialized systems to help them manage digital content. Moreover, archives at D/PU universities may not see removing unneeded digital materials from their systems as a challenging activity simply because they lack the staff or tools to remove duplicate, corrupted, or unneeded files. Several respondents wrote in their top challenge. For example, Respondent 16 stated, “Just getting it done with 10% of one staff member's time,” and Respondent 81 added, “Workflows and working with IT.” Overall, these responses may indicate that archives at D/PU institutions are underrecognized by their administrators. Thus, archivists at D/PU institutions lack sufficient standing to communicate with stakeholders the purpose of the archives and to perform in their role to capture and acquire institutional records of value.
In addition to the digital preservation activities, we designed 9 statements that focused on administrative, financial, technological, and personnel challenges to digital preservation. For these questions, we used a 5-point Likert scale to assess the impact of each challenge, with 1 being “strongly disagree” and 5 being “strongly agree.” The responses to the questions align with previous studies in that university archivists indicate that they lack sufficient staffing, funding, and administrative support to conduct digital preservation (see Table 8).
As previously mentioned, most of the archives represented in our survey only have 1 staff member who is primarily responsible for digital preservation. For R2 and D/PU institutions that have a minimal amount of staffing to begin with, this means that what staff there is must also take responsibility for preserving the digital content at the institution. Regarding staffing for digital preservation, our findings are consistent with Gorzalski's about the insufficiency of the current staffing levels for preserving born-digital records at most respondents’ institutions.43 Our findings also match the results reported by Hurley and Shearer concerning the low staffing levels for conducting digital preservation at most institutions that consider lack of funding for new positions as a major challenge.44 Recently, Skinner, in the A*CENSUS II: Archives Administrators Survey Report, mentioned that nearly two-thirds of archives administrators have 3 or fewer full-time-equivalent staff, and the budget is the most important factor that affects hiring decisions.45 Half of the archives administrators surveyed for this report indicated that if they received a 10% increase in their budget, they would use this funding for digital preservation.46 In our study, archivists identified staffing and funding as 2 of the top 3 challenges they face. Clearly, lack of funding affects the staffing capabilities at archives, which may result in a lack of personnel to conduct digital preservation.
Two other areas that indicate some minor variation in the responses among the types of university are technological resources and encouragement from administration to conduct digital preservation. For both challenges, respondents from D/PU institutions had a slightly higher level of disagreement—they lack sufficient computer software to conduct digital preservation, and their administrators do not encourage them as much as they believe they should to support their digital preservation practices. A possible explanation for these responses is that many archives at D/PU institutions are not viewed as essential units compared to other campus departments or functions and therefore do not receive as much funding or resources as archives at R1 or R2 universities. For example, Respondent 123 wrote that “Library administration and University administration don't understand the importance of digital preservation and haven't committed the necessary resources to do so effectively,” and Respondent 86 described their archives’ situation as “The university does not particularly see university archives & special collections as a priority.” This situation is not completely dire, as Respondent 62 expressed some optimism by stating that “Awareness [about digital preservation] is slowly but steadily increasing.” Our study reveals administrative challenges that are similar to the issues mentioned by the 2021 Staffing Survey Report, such as disconnection between the leadership and practitioner, having many competing priorities, and insufficient understanding and support for digital preservation by the senior-level administrator.47
Our responses indicate that participants have a greater need for additional technological support. Respondent 15 said, “Our Archives is lacking the most basic infrastructure and university commitment to conduct digital preservation,” and Respondent 26 added, “We are storing items in Preservica Starter, but because of limitations on staff time/training/hardware/software, we are not conducting any checks or using any programs prior to ingesting items.” Respondent 8 brought attention to the importance of developing staff skills in handling technologies at the archives by saying, “More practitioner workshops for different digital preservation software would be nice within the archival community.” The literature discusses similar technological challenges. For example, 35% of the respondents to the 2021 Staffing Survey Report disagreed or strongly disagreed about the availability of digital preservation infrastructure at their organizations to manage their contents, besides reporting issues like lacking technical support for preservation, software, secure preservation storage, and equipment.48 In Skinner's report, archives administrators indicated that skills related to technology and systems, such as digital preservation, are the most important skills for archivists in the next 5 years.49 Our survey shows that most respondents, and especially those from D/PU institutions, believe they have insufficient knowledge or training to conduct digital preservation.
Respondents also view collaboration as an important aspect of their digital preservation efforts. Clearly, collaboration may help ease the burden of securing the resources and knowledge necessary for preserving digital content. For example, Respondent 114 drew attention to the importance of initiating collaborations to enhance digital preservation projects when stating, “Without more resources (or alternatively, a much cheaper and easier workflow for digital preservation), it is unlikely we will be able to substantially improve our practices within the next 3–5 years. We are hoping for consortia solutions to help out.” Curiously, archivists at R1 institutions indicated a slightly lesser need to collaborate with consortia or organizations than archivists at R2 or D/PU institutions. This could be because R1 institutions quite simply have more resources available to them. The challenge remains, however, finding the resources and time needed to establish these relationships, which is a luxury that most archives cannot afford, especially those at D/PU universities. Respondent 8 perfectly summed up the situation by writing, “Time and financial resources create a big roadblock to effective digital preservation.”
Areas for Future Research
The findings from our survey raise new questions about the future of digital content at academic institutions in the United States. For example, how do university archives prioritize digital preservation activities given their lack of staffing and, especially, funding? How do solo archivists—single archivists who are tasked with all archival duties at their institution—conduct digital preservation and provide access to this content? By what methods do university archivists increase the awareness of the importance of digital preservation among their administrators to advocate for increased staffing and resources?
Our data also show that most archivists at R1 and R2 institutions use more than one piece of software to assist them with digital preservation. Upon analyzing these results, we could not discern any consensus on the combination of these tools for digital preservation. Research should investigate the use of these tools and the workflows by which they are used to better understand their capabilities and limitations. Moreover, research is needed to understand why archives at D/PU institutions have invested so little in digital preservation, whether it be the lack of awareness and knowledge about the role of archives among stakeholders, limited funding and staffing, tenuous relationships with IT, or other reasons. Finally, although it was not a central component of our survey, we were surprised that only 27 (of 92) participants indicated that they had conducted the Levels assessment at their institution; and, more alarmingly, only 4 of the 27 participants were from archives at D/PU universities. Why have not more D/PU archives evaluated their archives against the Levels? Are archivists at these institutions unfamiliar with the Levels? Do they lack the time to conduct this assessment? Or is the assessment tool not applicable to their environments, in other words, they may not be able to score a 1 in any single function? Research about the use of the Levels may identify ways that the archival community might assist archives to improve their digital preservation practices.
Conclusion
This study analyzed digital preservation practices and challenges at university archives in the United States. Despite limiting our study to these institutions, the findings may be applicable to other types of archives, such as community archives, historical societies, or even libraries that hold archival materials. The lack of staff, funding, and administrative support continue to be serious concerns for most institutions, whereas the systems and tools that our participants use for digital preservation may be used by most archivists regardless of their environment. From our survey, we identified thirty-five different systems and forty-eight tools used by archivists, but there are no clear patterns of use. The lack of common practices, or standardization, among these resources may be adversely affecting smaller institutions because archivists—solo archivists in particular—cannot invest the time and resources to determine which ones will work best for their situation, let alone develop new workflows that help them better manage their digital content. The diversity of digital preservation practices calls for the archival community to improve the standardization of systems and tools to help simplify the complex array of resources available to archivists for preserving digital content.
Although our findings are similar to previous research into digital preservation practices, this should not diminish the importance of the current study. Clearly, archivists continue to be limited in their digital preservation efforts by the lack of dedicated staff, resources, and support by administrations. Archivists at R1 and R2 institutions may be in slightly better positions than archivists at D/PU institutions, but they all lack the necessary resources to present a more optimistic outlook about their digital preservation efforts. The growth of digital information combined with the lack of institutional support and resources place archivists in a precarious position. It is unclear whether archivists will continue to be able to satisfy their mandate to acquire and ensure long-term access to organizational and cultural information. The distinct possibility also exists that some institutions, especially archives at D/PU universities, will experience a digital dark age, or gaps in their institutional memories, because archivists cannot sufficiently manage all the valuable digital content created by students, staff, and faculty. To protect against this scenario, the archival community needs to establish guidelines and recommendations for tools and systems specific to digital preservation practices. The profession needs to more strongly emphasize advocacy by developing case studies, webinars, and educational programs that inform archivists of ways to convey to administrators the importance of archives and digital preservation practices.50 Respondent 106 perfectly summarized the situation by writing, “We are in need as a preservation community of reassessment of best practice recommendations based on a new risk benefit analysis of the potential for data loss.” We could not agree more and believe that effective collaboration by the archival community will lead to the successful implementation and sustainability of digital preservation programs at all archives, not just those located within academic institutions in the United States.