Unit 7: Digital Repositories

Workflow steps and more items were added to my collection in DSpace.  The ability to add, edit and approve items under the workflow steps allows for more control of the collection.  I also had the opportunity to experiment with DSpace as we will be moving on to Eprints in the next unit.  We look at digital repositories as a place for long-term preservation; however, Nancy John in her article Digital Repositories: Not Quite at Your Fingertips states “digital repositories will be for near-term access and not long-term survival” as a result of “the problems of permanent storage media and permanently usable file formats in permanently readable storage” (p. 192).  These problems are apparent and it is unclear if long-term preservation will be guaranteed.  Nonetheless, we can still strive for the goal of long-term preservation by improving current solutions (migration, normalization, emulation) and continue searching for more.