Leveraging Short-term Opportunities to Address Long-term Obligations: A Perspective on Institutional Repositories and Digital Preservation Programs

Until now, information retrieval (IR) managers have been absorbed by efforts to increase the amount and quality of scholarly deposits. Other pressing concerns have been to develop the software, standards, and other tools to insure access, exchange, and discovery of the works in the IRs. But building an IR without making plans for technological, organizational, and resourcing sustainability is like building a house on sand.

At this particular juncture, there are opportunities to enhance the efforts of both institutional repository implementation and digital preservation program development by bringing together the strengths of each. This paper first explores the developmental paths and intersections of digital preservation and institutional repositories, considers the current status of both, and looks ahead toward the opportunities and challenges inherent in their convergent future.