Communicating Organizational Commitment to Long-Term Sustainability through a Trusted Digital Repository Self-Audit

Abstract

The digital repository activities of University of North Texas Libraries encompass The Portal to Texas History, the UNT Digital Library, and The Gateway to Oklahoma History, preserving over 1.5 million unique digital items, which comprise over 21 million pages of digital content. The news content, including both digital newspaper and news video content, represents the largest single collection in the UNT Libraries’ digital collection. In November of 2015, the UNT Libraries released the findings of a year-long process to complete a self-audit and to renew its goal of overseeing a trusted digital repository according to the criteria outlined by Trusted Repositories Audit and Certification (TRAC). This work involved stakeholders throughout the libraries and served as a vehicle for discussion of organizational commitment, sustainability, and contingency planning for the digital repository activities carried out by the UNT Libraries. The resulting document, “UNT Libraries TRAC Conformance Document,” and its related appendices were made publically available on the UNT Libraries website as a demonstration of an institutional commitment to digital preservation in an open and transparent way. This paper and presentation will show the structure of this self-audit, explore the documents generated and audited, and will examine challenges and their solutions as revealed by this process. Additionally this paper will present the findings of this process that specifically relate to the digital newspaper and news video content.