Collaboration for electronic preservation

Resource-sharing and knowledge dissemination have been the driving forces behind late twentieth century preservation collaboration. But with the challenge of digital preservation that emerged at the turn of the twenty-first century, collaboration for the discovery of new ways of doing things took on increased importance. Collaborative projects tackled problems like developing new methodologies, establishing standards and best practices, and developing procedures and tools for areas such as emulation and data recovery. This article explains the different driving forces behind collaboration for preservation of electronic material(1) and situates them within recent U.S. preservation and library collaboration history. It then provides two case studies of collaborative electronic preservation projects that the author participated in. Finally, it uses the experiences of those studies to identify a modest set of predictors for success in such future projects.