Policy

A. Purpose

It is the mission of the Texas Digital library (TDL) to enable digital initiatives in support of research, scholarship, and learning in Texas. As a part of this mission, the TDL endeavors to collect, preserve, and disseminate scholarly materials for the benefit of both producers and consumers of academic research and scholarship. TheTexas Data Repository, TDL’s instance of the Dataverse Network, encompassing each of the dataverses of its member institutions, is the digital resource intended to address a consortium-level need for publishing, managing, and providing access to research-generated data sets. The following Digital Preservation Policy describes the extent to which the TDL will support sustainable access to the digital research data and related content deposited in the Texas Data Repository.

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• data that might be precariously stored on fragile, random, or unsustainable storage devices can be securely preserved for the long term;
• data that might otherwise become neglected over time can be preserved and made accessible for other interested researchers to use and cite potentially providing wider visibility and impact for the research;
• many funding agencies and scholarly journals require data management plans that detail how the data will be managed, made accessible, and preserved.

B. Scope

The TDL accepts the responsibility to preserve and provide access to research data, including associated metadata and documentation that is properly deposited in the Texas Data Repository. This responsibility includes the provision of digital means to preserve and ensure ongoing access to said content for a minimum period of ten years after it is deposited in Dataverse. Long-term preservation of Dataverse content, beyond the ten-year retention period, is subject to the TDL’s selection criteria, appraisal of the content, and budgetary and technical support of resources necessary to meet this goal. Metadata for content removed from Dataverse, regardless of reason or retention period, may be preserved for an undetermined period of time after said content’s removal.

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Texas Data Repository provides basic, bit-level preservation through fixity checks and secure backup of deposited content. Further and more in-depth digital preservation activities and services must be provided by a digital preservation program at the institution where the research data was originally generated.

C. Strategic Plan

The TDL has an official backup strategy that requires all digital content to be:

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The TDL systems also provide security services key to basic digital preservation, namely access control, network monitoring and protection, encryption, and system updates (see Information Security Policy). There are currently no institutional limitations to the overall quantity of data that can be stored on TDL servers, only limitations on the size of individual files (4 GB) uploaded via the Texas Data Repository application and a recommendation for datasets not to exceed 10GB.

Procedures

Dataverse best practices for data management and preservation include:

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The TDL systems infrastructure includes bit-level fixity checking via Amazon EBS and S3 host service. For more information about security, backups and integrity checking, see also Information Security.

References

The Dataverse Project, “Harvard Dataverse Preservation Policy,” http://best-practices.dataverse.org/harvard-policies/harvard-preservation-policy.html

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