Sabbatical Report: Summary of Survey Results on Digital Preservation Practices at 148 Institutions

The purpose of my sabbatical project was to identify institutions with established digital preservation programs, and investigate how these programs were implemented. To accomplish this task, I conducted a web-based survey that looked into what systems were being used for digital preservation, what services were offered to the campus or user community, staffing and organizational models to support digital preservation programs, as well as the costs associated with these various digital preservation programs. I received a total of 148 responses to the survey. Of the 148 responses, 100 respondents finished the survey. To follow up from the survey, I conducted 12 phone interviews with librarians and archivists from various types of institutions. The digital preservation survey I conducted was sent out via several listservs, and I received responses from all types of institutions including national libraries, state libraries, academic libraries, public libraries, church and corporate archives, national parks archives, historical societies, research data centers, and presidential libraries. Roughly a third of the respondents were from large academic institutions with more than 20,000 students, another third were from smaller academic institutions with less than 20,000 students, and the remaining third were from non-academic institutions. The survey results and an annotated list of digital preservation systems and tools are also included as attachments to the report.