Comparison of Strategies and Policies for Building Distributed Digital Preservation Infrastructure: Initial Findings from the MetaArchive Cooperative

This paper discusses the importance of a particular approach to building and sustaining digital content preservation infrastructures for cultural memory organizations (CMOs), namely distributed approaches that are cooperatively maintained by CMOs (rather than centralized approaches managed by agencies external to CMOs), and why this approach may fill a gap in capabilities for those CMOs actively digitizing historical and cultural content (rather than scientific data). Initial findings are presented from an early organizational effort (the MetaArchive Cooperative) that seeks to fill this gap for CMOs. The paper situates these claims in the larger context of selected exemplars of DP efforts in both the United States and the United Kingdom that are seeking to develop effective DP models in an attempt to recognize those organizational aspects (such as the governmental frameworks, cultural backgrounds, and other differences in emphasis) that are UK and US-specific.