Uncomplicating the business of repositories
Penn collection
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Samvera
repository
software
open source
digital preservation
governance
curation
collections
collections management
Library and Information Science
Systems Architecture
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Abstract
In this presentation, we discuss how our library runs our repository in production to meet the needs of our “business” as efficiently as possible. We have an interest in limiting the number of digital platforms we manage, for the purposes of sustainability and efficiency, but we must also consider how well a general platform can meet specific user needs. A governance group of administrators, in conference with stakeholders and developers, seeks to find the best way to accommodate each collection or functional need, with an eye to minimizing technical complexity, offering stakeholders self-serve options when possible, and maintaining a single canonical copy of each object. We will present some case studies of how material has been handled in our developing digital ecosystem, where preservation and access sometimes present conflicting priorities. We are exploring how our repository can best evolve to support our aims of making data and documents freely available.