What are Digital Preservation Stewards?
Like Digital Access Partners, Digital Preservation Stewards make a commitment to GPO and the FDLP to retain and make accessible at no fee the digital resources they hold that are in scope of the National Collection. However, Digital Preservation Stewards make an additional commitment to preserve and provide access to those resources via a digital repository that GPO experts have determined meets the same standards for trustworthiness and reliability as GPO’s GovInfo.
For that reason, GPO does not archive resources under digital stewardship. GPO does commit to direct users to these resources via bibliographic records in the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP) and persistent URLs (PURLs) included on those records. In the event the partner is no longer able to retain or make the resources publicly accessible, the partner will transfer copies of the digital resources and any associated metadata to GPO.
Digital Preservation Stewards do not make any commitment to retain tangible versions of the items included in their Digital Preservation Stewards collections, but they are invited to sign related Preservation Steward Partnerships for those same FDLP resources.
Active Digital Preservation Stewards
| Partner | NCSA | Preservation Commitment |
| University of North Texas Libraries | South | Digitize, preserve, and provide public access to a variety of U.S. Government publications |
Digital Preservation Steward Spotlight
As a Digital Preservation Steward, GPO recognizes the University of North Texas Libraries
(UNT) commitment to trustworthy digital preservation best practices and standards. With such a successful and efficacious approach to digital preservation, this partnership explicitly recognizes UNT Digital Library as an excellent steward of these resources and provides for a succession plan if UNT were to transfer these digital resources to GPO. The UNT Digital Library currently preserves and provides access to:
- The Government Accountability Office Reports Collection, consisting of over 13,000 documents on a variety of topics ranging from fiscal issues to international affairs.
- Government Comics: A selection of digitized government comics owned by the UNT Libraries. Including materials from the Bureau of Cartoons established by in 1918 and lasting until the end of World War I.
- Government Documents A to Z Digitization Project: an ongoing project encompassing U.S. Federal government documents published prior to 1960, starting with the call number A.
- World War II Newsmaps
- Annals of Congress
- Federal Communications Reports
- And more!
UNT’s Digital Preservation Steward Partnership also includes their dedication to hosting the CyberCemetery, an archive of government websites that have ceased operation.
Benefits of Being a Digital Preservation Steward
Gain national recognition for the work of your institution.- Increase access to and discoverability of parts of the National Collection.
- Consultation with GPO’s digital preservation experts.
Expectations for Digital Preservation Stewards
- The repository must have a public mission to provide long-term public access to the digital objects.
- The repository’s overarching governance structure and institution must be committed to the financial, organizational, legal, and technical obligations for supporting long-term digital preservation responsibilities.
- The repository must be committed to mitigating technical, infrastructural, and operational risks relating to the long-term access and understandability of the digital objects.
- The repository must maintain at least two digital copies of all digital objects on separate media.
- Security protocols must ensure digital objects cannot be edited or deleted by any single individual.
- The repository must have appropriate technical, preservation, and descriptive metadata associated with the digital object to ensure transfer and migration of digital objects from one storage location to another, if feasible.
- The digital objects within the repository must be self-contained objects, designated with unique identifiers.
- The repository must perform regular file fixity checks, virus scans, and monitor file degradation and technology obsolescence. The repository must also have a notification system when these checks and scan are performed.
- The repository must have the capability to trace provenance of all digital objects.
- The repository must be committed to ingesting content according to digital preservation best practices and guidelines including adherence, where applicable and possible, to the Library of Congress’ Recommended Formats Statement and Guidelines of the Federal Agency Digital Guidelines Initiative (FADGI).
- The content covered by the partnership agreement is within scope of the FDLP.
How to Become a Digital Preservation Steward
Please contact us via askGPO to learn more about how your institution can participate. When submitting a question, select the category, “Partnerships.”
The process is easy. Once you submit your inquiry, a member of GPO’s staff will reach out to coordinate on the specifics of the partnership and then work with your organization to formalize the agreement with a Memorandum of Agreement.