Digital Preservation Services (DPS) supports a range of systems and tools that facilitate digital stewardship activities at Harvard Library. For some solutions, such as the Digital Repository Service (DRS), DPS operates as a direct business owner, providing strategic oversight and leading the roadmap development. For other tools, DPS .
Harvard Library units are not limited to using the systems and tools listed below. The DPS mission is to support the long-term usability of Harvard's digital collections, and DPS is available for consultation and on the use of any solutions that aid that objective. For questions about systems and tools not listed below, please contact the DPS team.
Digital Repository Service (DRS)
The DRS is Harvard's digital preservation repository and has been in production since 1999. It provides core functions for effective preservation of the University’s digital collections. Learn more about the DRS.
Archive-It
Archive-It is a web collection, access, and discovery platform hosted by the Internet Archive. Learn more about using Archive-It for web archiving.
ePADD
ePADD is an open-source email archiving tool that supports appraisal, processing, preservation, discovery and delivery of email records. Read more about ePADD and how to get started with email archiving.
Other Tools and Schemas
XML Schemas Maintained by Harvard Library
FITS (File Information Tool Set)
FITS identifies, validates, and extracts technical metadata for various file formats. It wraps multiple third-party open source tools (JHOVE, Exiftool, National Library of New Zealand Metadata Extractor, DROID, FFIdent, Apache Tika, the File Utility and MediaInfo), normalizes and consolidates their output, and reports any errors. More more information please see the FITS website.
JHOVE (JSTOR/Harvard Object Validation Environment)
An extensive technical description of the formal characteristics of a digital resource is a necessary precursor to preservation planning for or intervention on that resource. These characteristics are highly dependent upon the format used to represent the resource's abstract content. With funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, LDI staff collaborated with the JSTOR Electronic-Archiving Initiative (now known as Portico) to produce an extensible tool, called JHOVE (the JSTOR/Harvard Object Validation Environment, pronounced "jove"), for automating format-specific identification, validation, and characterization of digital resources. Harvard and JSTOR have made this tool available to the wider community under an open source license, and it is widely deployed internationally. JHOVE has facilities to extract important technical characteristics of resources created in many commonly-used formats, such as AIFF and WAVE (audio); GIF, JPEG, JPEG 2000, and TIFF (still image); ASCII and UTF-8 (text); and PDF. JHOVE is no longer maintained by Harvard Library. It is now maintained as an open source project.