How are institutional repositories (IRs) to preserve the digital content for which they accept responsibility? Until now, much emphasis has been placed on the role of repository software. Two of these software applications, notably DSpace [2] and Fedora [3], have promoted support for preservation as a key feature. In contrast, the first software designed for IRs, EPrints [4], has until now offered less explicit support for preservation. In truth, reliance on repository software alone will not be sufficient: "it seems obvious that no existing software application could serve on its own as a trustworthy preservation system. Preservation is the act of physically and intellectually protecting and technically stabilizing the transmission of the content and context of electronic records across space and time, in order to produce copies of those records that people can reasonably judge to be authentic. To accomplish this, the preservation system requires natural and juridical people, institutions, applications, infrastructure, and procedures." (Wilczek and Glick 2006)
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http://www.dlib.org/dlib/may07/hitchcock/05hitchcock.html
SOURCE: D-Lib Magazine Vol 13 No 5/6
