Digital Preservation: Data-PASS Project Gets Matching IMLS Support for $1.6 Million Project

The Data-PASS Project has been given "one-to-one matching funds for the $1.6 million dollar project" by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The Institute of Museum and Library Services has generously supported members of the Data-PASS Alliance through an award to develop a policy-based archival replication system for libraries, archives and museums. . . .

The archival community has largely recognized that a geographically – and organizationally – distributed approach is necessary to minimize long-term risks to digital materials. The new system will provide a way to ensure that replicated collections are both institutionally and geographically distributed and to allow for the development of increasingly measurable and auditable trusted repository requirements. This result will be to enable any library, museum or archive to audit its content across an existing LOCKSS network and will allow groups of collaborating institutions to automatically and verifiably replicate each others' content.

The Data-PASS partnership was established as part of a previously funded Library of Congress NDIIPP program and the replication system builds upon a prototype developed through that project. Data-PASS network model

Tools and training to facilitate the creation of archival replication policies and the auditing and management of a replication network will be released this year. We will also release extensions to the Dataverse Network System that enable curators of dataverse virtual archives to easily participate in these replication networks. These tools will be distributed as open source, and as self-contained packages for non-technical users.