Introduction

This Digital Preservation Strategy outlines the key principles and goals for digital preservation in the Library at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) over a five-year period. Creating a solid foundation around good preservation practice and sustainable implementation is key to building and improving our digital preservation capabilities over the coming years. This strategy underpins our initial steps at Queen’s towards ensuring secure long-term preservation and access to digital content to support the research, learning and teaching needs of the University and preserve information for future generations.

Since its establishment in 1845, Queen’s University Belfast has been making a difference to societies on a local, national, and global scale. This story is captured in archives, student records, research outputs, documents, business databases, webpages, and media, many of which have been converted into digital formats, or are now created as entirely born-digital files. The goals outlined in this strategy help protect these digital assets, which are essential for the institutional memory, operational, commercial, research, teaching and civic activities of the University.

This strategy sets out Queen’s University Belfast’s ongoing commitment to preserving our digital collections, in line with Strategy 2030 and RLUK Digital Shift priorities. It sits in conjunction with our Digital Preservation Policy,  Collections Development Policies, and Research Publications and Copyright Policy.

2. Purpose

This strategy outlines the goals and activities needed over the next 5 years (2025-2030), to safeguard the authenticity, integrity, and security of our collections using active digital preservation solutions, and the wider activities needed to embed a culture of digital preservation within the Library and University.  

3. Governance

Governance and review of the strategy is overseen by a Digital Preservation Subgroup of the Open Research Group, consisting of staff within Special Collections and Archives, including the Digital Preservation Librarian; Open Research team; University Archivist; Information Compliance in consultation with Digital and Information Services, and Chancellery. The Digital Preservation Subgroup meets quarterly to review and action progress relating to this Strategy.

4. Objectives

4.1 Inspire a culture of digital preservation awareness and responsible lifecycle management:

• • Advocate for University-wide digital preservation
  • Offer resources and workshops for staff and researchers, in digital preservation awareness and tools to contribute to a sustainable preservation culture
  • Regularly engage with the digital preservation community
  • Annual Digital Preservation Awareness training for researchers and staff, supported by LibGuides and advice pages
  • Workshops, surveys, and focus groups with researchers to promote sustainable file format use
  • Participate in advocacy and community initiatives, such as World Digital Preservation Day
  • Promote responsible lifecycle management through documented procedures, shared Digital Asset Register, and departmental engagement

4.2 Secure Queen’s unique digital assets in a preservation system:

• • Develop end-to-end workflows to manage and preserve content, including born-digital and legacy collections held by the Library
  • Protect against obsolescence by implementing and annually reviewing migration of assets to durable file formats
  • Develop secure file transfer mechanisms including checksum validation at deposit to ensure integrity
  • Ensure multiple copies of digital content are stored across multiple locations
  • Develop coding solutions, including systems integration between the research repository and preservation system, to assist with automating digital preservation workflows, where beneficial
  • Introduce controlled access and retention schedules to comply with security and privacy laws (OAIS ISO 14721, UK data protection)
  • Apply migration strategies to mitigate obsolescence risks using file format registries

4.3 Underpin trust in digital collections at Queen’s:

• • Record checksums at each point of transfer, and automate integrity checks to ensure continued data integrity
  • Integrate preservation metadata and audit trails to support the authenticity of our digital collections
  • Develop a cloud-based solution for secure acquisition and transferal of large digital deposits
  • Assign Unique identifiers (DOIs and PIDs) for accurate linkage and long-term reference
  • Adopt PREMIS metadata standards and consistent templates to ensure authenticity and traceability
  • Automate integrity checks, version control, and maintain preservation logs for auditability
  • Regularly audit and report on preservation activity, deletions, and risk assessments to ensure transparency

4.4 Ensure long-term access and discoverability:

• • Maintain a comprehensive Library-wide Digital Asset Register, to facilitate asset management and underpin preservation scheduling and research
  • Adopt Open Licenses (e.g., CC BY) and engage with researchers to develop a registry of recommended file formats for long-term preservation and access
  • Connect the Institutional Research Repository with the Preservation System to streamline ingests and maintain up-to-date metadata and retention and embargo schedules
  • Map metadata into Archival Information Packages (AIPs) using Dublin Core and linked reference metadata to enhance searchability
  • Collaborate with Library Digital Services to improve user accessibility and search functionality, and improve discoverability of Special Collections materials
  • Develop Open Research preservation workflows and retention policies in compliance with funder mandates and open data policies

4.5 Enhance documentation to comply with legal, ethical and institutional mandates:

• • Annual review of the Digital Preservation Policy
  • Update collections rights documentation and retention policies to facilitate copying, transformation and 3^rd party storage for digital preservation
  • Annual assessment of digital preservation capabilities, using DPC RAM, and NDSA Levels
  • Develop guidance documentation for depositors, covering supported file formats, metadata templates, and permissions
  • Review and update submission and donation forms to include the right to transform digital records for preservation purposes
  • Ensure secure controls for compliance with UK data protection laws and institutional policies for embargoed and restricted content
  • Implement documented retention schedules, deletion approval processes, and recovery procedures
  • Integrate risk and disaster recovery planning, including a preservation service exit strategy

5. Implementation