Digital Preservation Efforts at USM
Channel: CPN-DAM
Date: 2016-12-12

Digital Preservation Efforts at USM

Elizabeth La Beaud, University of Southern Mississippi

The University of Southern Mississippi (USM) has steadily been working to improve its digital preservation infrastructure over the past four years. In 2013, with funding from a NEH Preservation Assistance Grant, consultants Tom Clareson and Liz Bishoff conducted a digital preservation readiness assessment and jump started USM’s education on the topic. Since then, USM has added geographically distributed backups, manual fixity checks, manual metadata logs, and manual file format migrations to its arsenal with varying degrees of success. The influx in needed manpower and technical infrastructure precipitated a financial commitment from the university and the purchase of a robust digital preservation system. Using the National Digital Stewardship Alliance’s (NDSA) Levels of Digital Preservation as a guide, this session will follow the progression of USM’s digital preservation efforts over the past four years from education to implementation. Attendees will learn how to evaluate an institution’s digital preservation readiness using the NDSA’s Levels of Digital Preservation, and come away with ideas for lost cost, high impact ways to improve their own digital preservation efforts.