25 Years of Digital Preservation at Harvard
Digital preservation is the continuation of Harvard Library’s longstanding stewardship mission in the digital realm. The digital transformation over the past 50 years has radically affected all aspects of contemporary life. However, the information artifacts underlying this progress are inherently at risk of damage and loss without continual proactive preservation attention. Befitting its position as the world’s premier academic research library, Harvard Library has been a leader in the field of digital preservation for over a quarter century.
This timeline provides a brief introduction to a number of highlights from the last 25 years of digital preservation at Harvard Library.
1998 |
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April | Start of Harvard’s Library Digital Initiative (LDI) program Five-year project to build a first-generation production infrastructure for digital library collections, including support for digital preservation activities | 
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1999 |
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March | Initial requirements finalized for DRS Functional Requirements for the LDI Repository, Phase 1 https://web.archive.org/web/19980514193504/http://hul.harvard.edu/ldi/ | |
2000 |
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October | First object preserved in DRS Harvard-Yenching Library, Hedda Morrison collection, Buddhist Nun Kneeling at Altar, ca. 1933-1946, HM01.6811 | |
2001 |
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January | DRS storage refresh Migration of archival storage from in-database to attached storage area network (SAN) | |
February | First page-turned (PDS) object preserved in DRS University Archives, Official Register of Harvard University XXVIII:4, February 24, 1931 | |
May | DRS Policy Guide, version 1 Guidelines associated with operation and use of the DRS, highlighting digital materials accepted for deposit, services, and the rights and responsibilities of content curators and collection managers | |
December | E-journal article interchange XML DTD Precursor of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) Journal Archiving and Interchange Tag Suite (JAITS) and NISO Journal Article Tag Suite (JATS) | |
2002 |
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March | 15,000th object preserved in DRS Schlesinger Library, Daguerreotype portrait of unidentified woman, ca. 1840-1860, 91-M62-1-1z | |
July | First Open Collections Project (OCP) preserved in DRS Baker Library, Women Working: 1800-1930 collection, Edith Abbott's Women In Industry: A Study in American Economic History, 1910 |
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October | First geospatially-referenced image preserved in DRS Map Collection, Ch'ing-hai upper Yellow River (Huang He) expedition, 1925-1927, sheet 3 (102°24'22" N, 34°42'26" E; 103°46'36" N, 36°11'21" E), in the Harvard Geospatial Library (HCL) |
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2003 |
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May | First biomedical image preserved in DRS Countway Library, Biomedical Image Library (BIL) | |
2004 |
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May | 1 millionth file preserved in DRS Harvard College Library, Open Collections Program, OCR text of W. Jett Lauck's Diversified Industries, 1911, p. 373 | |
August | First audio recording preserved in DRS Loeb Music Library, Archive of World Music, Matins for Sunday After the Elevation of the Holy Cross, 1960, Laura Bolton Collection |
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2005 |
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May | Initial release of JHOVE Free open source file format identification, validation, and characterization tool, consistently the most frequently downloaded in the digital preservation community |
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October | PDF/A standard (ISO 19005-1) Archival profile of the ubiquitous PDF format developed under Harvard leadership of the ISO process | |
2006 |
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August | DRS Policy Guide, version 2.0 Policies associated with the Harvard Library Digital Repository Service (DRS) intended for Harvard collection managers who are using or considering making use of DRS services | |
2007 |
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April | 1 millionth object preserved in DRS Judaica Collection, Photograph of Yossi Zwecker in "Peter-Pan", JPCDPIZ2565 | |
May | Specifications for digitized images and transfer packaging for Google Book Scanning (GBS) project Technical specifications for TIFF and JPEG 2000 images and METS transfer package, used as the basis for subsequent GBS partner and HathiTrust mass digitization efforts |
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2008 |
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February | DRS storage refresh New reliance on SAM/QFS for automated file transfer to mirrored SAN arrays and robotic tape library | |
May | First website preserved in DRS University Archives, A-Sites collection, Welcome to the Harvard Physics Department Website! February 26, 2007 https://wayback.archive-it.org/org-935/20070226154039/http://www.physics.harvard.edu/ | |
June | First Google-scanned book preserved in DRS Volume V of The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1884 https://hdl.handle.net/2027/njp.32101076453057
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September | 50 TB preserved in DRS 1.9 million objects, 8.7 million files | |
September | Digital preservation highlighted as LDI project The continuing viability of digital content must be proactively monitored and Library Digital Initiative staff must be prepared to intervene as necessary to circumvent incipient obsolescence https://web.archive.org/web/20090531105224/http://hul.harvard.edu/ois/digiproj/digpres.html |
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November | 10 millionth file preserved in DRS Loeb Music Library, Page-turned image of vocal score of Wagner's Rienzi, p. 231 https://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL.Loeb:2251895 | |
2009 |
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June | 100 TB preserved in DRS 3.4 million objects, 12.2 million files | |
2010 |
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July | Founding membership in National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) Advancing the capacity to preserve our nation's digital resources for the benefit of present and future generations |
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2011 |
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Spring | Membership in HathiTrust Not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries preserving 17+ million digitized items | |
2012 |
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Spring | DRS storage refresh Hardware replacement and addition of anticipated necessary capacity | |
2013 |
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June | Co-hosted the National Digital Stewardship Residency (NDSR) Boston program with MIT Two 9-month residencies for 10 residents at Boston area stewardship organizations https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/ndsr_boston/home |
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September | Consortial subscription to Archive-It (AIT) Comprehensive suite of web archiving, digital preservation, and research services https://archive-it.org/ |
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2014 |
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April | First electronic thesis/dissertation (ETD) preserved in DRS Daniel Mahefasoa Brady, Mechanisms of Cross-Modal Refinement by Visual Experience, doctoral dissertation, 2012 | |
July | Membership in BitCurator Consortium (BCC) Community-led support for the curation of born-digital materials | |
December | First email preserved in DRS University Archives, Papers of Lawrence Bogorad collection, February 7, 2002 |
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2015 |
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May | 50 millionth file preserved in DRS Museum of Comparative Zoology, Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) collection, Master page-turned image, Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l'Académie des sciences, July-December, 1889, p. 21 |
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2016 |
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January | DRS Policy Guide, version 2.6 Policies associated with the Harvard Library Digital Repository Service (DRS) intended for Harvard collection managers who are using or considering making use of DRS services | |
January | Web archiving environmental scan Description and analysis of 23 international web archiving programs reporting on researcher use of – and impediments to working with – web archives | |
March | Membership in the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC) Acquire, preserve and make accessible knowledge and information from the Internet for future generations everywhere, promoting global exchange and international relations |
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June | Initial release of open-source File Identification Tool Set (FITS) Free open source tool for identifying and validating file formats, extracting metadata embedded within files, and outputting the metadata in various formats |
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2017 |
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February | First video recording preserved in DRS Americas, Europe, and Oceania Division, ACT UP Oral History Project collection, Changing the Definition of AIDS |
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Spring | Migration of obsolete audio formats Migration of some 7,000 RealAudio recordings to MP3 and SMIL playlists to AES-60 | |
Spring | DRS storage refresh Integration with the Massachusetts Green High-Performance Computing Center (MGHPPC) storage facility | |
October | Harvard University Digital Strategy, version 1.0 Infrastructure for the preservation of and access to digitized and born-digital information, taking a tiered approach to supporting short-, medium-, and long-term needs |
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2018 |
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January | Largest file preserved in DRS (so far!) Schlesinger Library, Bernice Sandler appearance on Larry King television show, 1985, video, 568 GB |
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March | Web Archiving Collection Service (WAX) decommissioned; all content transitioned to Archive-It WAX decommissioned due to the increasing unsustainable burden of maintenance and enhancement in favor of the Internet Archive’s Archive-It service https://preservation.library.harvard.edu/web-archives-collections |
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May | 400 TB preserved in DRS 9.5 million objects, 81.3 million files | |
September | Hosted iPRES 2018, the 15th International Conference on Digital Preservation Where Art and Science Meet: The Art in Science and the Science in Art, celebrating the first 15 years of iPRES, the premier international conference on digital preservation |
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October | Harvard Library Digital Preservation program Formally established as independent administrative unit within Preservation Services https://preservation.library.harvard.edu/digital-preservation | |
November | Inaugural Digital Preservation Reading Club Informal, monthly gathering of Library colleagues interested in discussing trends and topics relevant to digital preservation | |
2019 |
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July | DRS Policy Guide, version 4.0 Controlling principles and obligations underlying the long -term preservation of digital resources by the Harvard Library’s Digital Repository Service (DRS) | |
August |