FONTBONNE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES
Digital Preservation Policy
Policy Statement
The purpose of this Digital Preservation Policy is to document how the Fontbonne University Archives collects, preserves, and provides access to its digital materials. These digital preservation actions ensure that faculty, staff, students, and other users will have ongoing access to the Archive’s expanding archival and special digital collections. The Archives serves as the institutional repository of Fontbonne University, maintaining a variety of institutional records in many formats, including unpublished documents, books, periodicals, newspapers, photographs, videos, digital files, and artwork.
Summary Statement
The Archives is committed to lifecycle management of its digital resources. Digital preservation activities include:
• Acquiring, preserving, and making available electronic primary source materials that document the history of Fontbonne University.
• Preserving and making available electronic works that reflect the heritage, mission, and values of the institution as a Catholic university founded and sponsored by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet.
• Supporting the learning, teaching, and/or research needs of Fontbonne University students, faculty, staff, and alumni, as well as other researchers.
Scope
Fontbonne University Archives is charged with both the collection of electronic records and the creation of them from existing analog materials in the Archives. The Archives collects electronic records that are primarily institutional records of Fontbonne University, and records of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, including their origin in France and provinces in the United States.
Selection Criteria
Electronic records which enhance the Archives’ scope will be selected for ongoing preservation in their original file formats. All preservation actions will be taken with the assumption that the selected materials are intended for permanent retention unless explicitly stated otherwise.
Strategies
Digital preservation actions are managed according to the following lifecycle model, which is a framework describing the stages that digital resources go through during their existence:
- Creation of digital files
- Selection
- Ingest
- Metadata Creation
- Storage
- Preservation Management (includes monitoring of file integrity and security)
- Migration (including cases of technological obsolescence)
- Access
Operating Principles
Fontbonne University Archives strives to comply with the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) reference model standard and other digital preservation standards and practices as they evolve, including:
- Considering the preservation implications of any systems or software designed or implemented to hold digital content.
- Capturing and maintaining adequate metadata via a digital inventory to document digital content and what is required to provide access to the content.
- Establishing adequate and secure backups according to “3-2-1 rule”: make three copies, store two on different types of media and one in a different location.
- Maintaining hardware, software, and storage media that contain archival content, while migrating backup copies to new storage media every 3-5 years.
- Maintaining integrity of digital files by utilizing tools that provide automatic synching, virus scans, and validation of checksums, preferably every 1-2 months.
- Complying with intellectual property, copyright, and ownership rights for the preservation of and access to all content.
Roles and Responsibilities
The Archivist and the Digital Collections Management Preservation Action Committee are charged with the responsibility of performing digital preservation of archival and special collections materials.
Permissions/Access
The majority of digital collections in the Archives are accessible by appointment only, although some digital content is available on the Archives website. Researchers who visit the Archives (both internal and non-affiliates of Fontbonne University) are required to register and sign a form (https://library.fontbonne.edu/ld.php?content_id=27895323) acknowledging that they have read and understand the General Use Policy (https://library.fontbonne.edu/ld.php?content_id=27894577).
Permission to use the Archives must be obtained from the Archivist, who will note the records to be consulted and the purpose of their use. Fontbonne University Archives reserves the right to restrict the copying of digital materials that might be protected by U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, United States Code).
Collaboration
Fontbonne University Archives will partner with the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet’s congregational and provincial archives to preserve collections of mutual interest. The Archives is also committed to collaborating with other universities, libraries, institutions, and organizations in order to better serve the collective mission to produce and preserve digital content.
Related Documents
For more information on Fontbonne University Archives’ collection development, please see the Collection Development Policy: https://library.fontbonne.edu/ld.php?content_id=33681089.
Approved December 2017