This text can be reused without permission within data management plans, donor agreements, grant applications, etc. when the DRS will be used as the digital preservation repository. Please contact Andrea Goethals for variations of this text to fit your particular use case.
Last updated: May 9, 2017
Harvard Library (HL) Digital Repository Service (DRS)
The Digital Repository Service (DRS) is Harvard Library’s long-term preservation and access repository containing over 213 TB of digitized and born-digital material in many different formats. It is a robust and mature repository that has been in production since 2000 and is used by over fifty Harvard libraries, archives and museums. The DRS technology is centrally maintained by Harvard's Library Technology Services (LTS) department. Content deposited to the DRS is automatically validated for compliance with Harvard Library's format and metadata standards, virus-checked, assigned persistent names and replicated in quadruplicate to professionally-staffed data centers in Cambridge, Boston and Southborough, MA. Scripts are run continuously across 2 of the on-line copies to check that the bits have not been corrupted. In the event corruption is detected, LTS system administrators use documented procedures to replace corrupted copies with good copies. The DRS metadata receives the same preservation care as the content files. The descriptive, preservation, administrative, structural and technical metadata is written to a database and to an index that are backed up daily, but also written to files that are replicated and monitored using the same technologies and practices as used for the content files.
Harvard Library commits to making sure that DRS content remains usable long-term even as technologies change. All DRS content conforms to documented “content models” specifying the allowable formats, associated rendering tools and preservation plans. DRS preservation staff monitor these formats and renderers to watch for signs of obsolescing formats. Workflows for migrating obsolete formats were recently created for the DRS and will be used to convert obsolete formats to modern formats over time. DRS staff are qualified to conduct such format migrations as they already have experience migrating the content to newer generations of storage systems and the metadata to new metadata schemas.