Pepperdine Libraries Acquires New System to Ensure Digital File Preservation

You may have walked past Pepperdine Libraries’ cold storage in Payson Library, specially designed to protect our delicate rare and archival materials. What is less visible, but equally vital, is Pepperdine Libraries’ new digital preservation storage environment, Preservica. Preservica is a system designed to address the unique preservation challenges of digital files. Digital files are prone to bit rot, or the gradual corruption of data due to technical errors in storage infrastructure. Preservica generates and tracks a checksum, or digital fingerprint, for each file. If the file is corrupted and the fingerprint changes, Preservica can replace it with one of multiple copies it creates and stores in multiple different data centers.

File formats can become obsolete and unreadable when the software needed to open them is no longer available. Preservica converts proprietary or obsolete file formats to a format recommended by the National Archives, while maintaining the original file. The system also extracts technical metadata from each file, like creation date and format version. The provenance and modification history of files are also documented, ensuring transparency and trustworthiness. By addressing key preservation challenges, Preservica ensures that Pepperdine Libraries’ digital records remain secure and accessible into the future.

Dean of Libraries Mark Roosa expressed his utmost confidence in the system. "Preservica not only creates processing efficiency, but it also buys insurance for the digital content that we have invested in, so that digital content will be available to our learning community now and into the future," said Roosa.