The preservation of the University's digital assets arises from a twofold mandate:

• scholarly commitment; and
• institutional responsibility

Scholarly commitment:

As an institution of higher education, Northern Illinois University strives to promote excellence and engagement in teaching and learning, research and scholarship, creativity and artistry, and outreach and service. In addition, NIU follows an Open Access Policy that requires faculty members to deposit copies of their published research in the Huskie Commons institutional repository. As more resources and services associated with these functions become digital, the Library's responsibilities must expand to include the identification, stewardship, and preservation of designated digital content campus-wide.

Institutional responsibility:

The Library's commitment to digital preservation is explicitly stated in the initiatives outlined in the current strategic plan, which calls for the Library to collect, preserve, and provide access to the University's digital and intellectual assets (e.g. theses, dissertations, pre and post prints, and data sets), and ensure long-term access to unique collections.

The University Archives also serves as the repository for all official records of the University that have permanent historical or administrative value, including those in electronic format.

Further, NIU has mandated responsibilities to preserve and maintain access to certain digital objects. Some legal obligations derived from State laws require the Library to maintain files in an archival fashion, including the Illinois State Records Act and the OpenAccess to Research Articles Act. The University Archives and Rare Books and Special Collections must also adhere to the State Records Act and Deed of Gift agreements.

The Library recognizes that there are several challenges to implementing an effective digital preservation policy, such as:

• Change: Technology changes frequently, and with it, formats and dissemination mechanisms. As the Library's digital collection diversifies over time, staff will be required to monitor the changing needs of materials, and update policies and procedures based on these needs.
• Rapid growth: The University's official record is increasingly available only in digital format. The Library's digitized collection grows each year. Stewarding these materials requires a concerted investment in technological equipment, resources, and staff that must scale with increasing demands and obligations.
• Sustainability: A sustainable digital preservation model responds to change with appropriate new technology and increases in staffing. Cost modeling numbers are difficult to come by in the field, but noteworthy advancements are being made. Library staff will monitor the output of the 4C Project for possible sustainability models and other advice in this area. The Library requires sufficient funding for operations and major improvements to manage its digital collections and to sustain funding for ongoing digital preservation efforts. A digital preservation policy requires adequate resources. The Library must refrain from promising more than it can deliver.
• Selection: Realistically, the Library cannot preserve everything. It is vital that sensible selection processes and criteria be developed.
• Management: Additional thought must be given to the coordination and oversight of digital collections that are to be preserved. To balance the sometimes competing goals of access and preservation, the Library will focus on the role preservation plays in access.
• Partnerships: The Library is committed to working with content providers including creators, donors, and others to preserve their content.
• Communication: To implement a digital preservation policy, the Library must commit to transparent, honest, and frequent communication among all relevant parties. This commitment implies that regular reports should be supplied to the Preservation Committee from content managers and IT on processes and difficulties.
• Expertise: The Library must commit to hiring or developing staff with the requisite expertise to operate a robust digital preservation program. Additionally, the library must be committed to continually update staff skills as technologies change.
• Rights: The changing landscape surrounding intellectual property rights impact the ability to provide access to digital materials and can impact digital preservation efforts. In addition, the Library must function as steward for materials that are in-copyright and have access restrictions.

A documented below, the Library's levels of commitment recognizes that developing solutions for born digital materials informs solutions for the other categories. The commitment statement does not imply that these assets are inherently more valuable or important than other categories and/or our traditional analog materials.

Born-digital materials: Special effort must be made to ensure that selected materials be preserved in perpetuity.

Digitized materials (no analog available): All reasonable steps must be taken to preserve materials without a print analog when re-digitization is not possible or if re-digitization would pose further harm to the physical item.

Digitized materials (analog materials available): Reasonable measures must be taken to extend the life of digital objects with a readily available print analog. The cost of re-digitizing will need to be weighed against the cost of preserving the existing digital object.

Licensed digital resources: The Library is committed to working within our consortia, licensing agreements, etc. to assure ongoing access to and long-term preservation for licensed resources (ebooks, subscription databases, etc.). Whenever possible, we advocate for services that have preservation infrastructure (e.g. Portico) and/or articulated exit strategies for licensed materials in the event of the cessation of the consortia or licensing agreement(s).

Other materials: Materials for short term use, such as those scanned for interlibrary borrowing requests, or for other content deemed unessential, will not be preserved.

While the Library has primary responsibility for digital preservation at NIU, it is a shared responsibility. Designated University officials, content creators, and disseminators must act to fulfill this policy. In this section we outline the roles and responsibilities of concerned parties as they exist presently. These roles and responsibilities may change.

Producers: These include faculty, students, staff, alumni, collectors, creators of content, publishers, and others. Producers will be responsible for complying with established deposit requirements and working with the management of the digital archive to ensure successful transfer.

Management: Management in this context refers to library personnel who set and implement digital preservation policy. These may include the Preservation Committee, the University Archivist, the Digital Projects Content Advisory Group, and others.

Administrators: Administrators are defined as those who carry out day-to-day operations necessary to preserve digital content. These stewards include library personnel associated with the Digital Projects Content Advisory Group, the University Archives, Metadata Services, and Library Systems. Stewardship extends to regular reporting of maintenance activities and extraordinary events that affect digital materials.

Consumers: Users of content either identified for digital preservation and/or presently stored in the digital archive. These consumers, who may include faculty, students, alumni, researchers, staff, and the general public, will be responsible for honoring applicable copyright restrictions and licensing agreements.

Third party: This category includes any additional stakeholder who will be a provider of value-added services, for example, aggregators.

Institutional collaborators: These collaborators may include corporate partners, non-profit organizations, academic researchers, cultural heritage organizations, government agencies at all levels, and all other relevant partners.

Stakeholders in digital preservation include Library staff, Library patrons, faculty and University staff who create digital content housed by the Library.

Administration: Commits to supporting an environment in which digital preservation is regarded as a critically necessary endeavor. This support includes providing adequate managerial and financial commitment to develop a digital preservation program. Resource allocation in support of digital preservation is crucial to the future of valuable digital materials created, owned, or managed by the NIU Libraries. 

Digital Collections Advisory Group: Guides the acquisition, processing, management, storage, access, and long-term care of the library’s unique digital assets through the entire digital curation lifecycle. This is accomplished through advocacy, planning, and other relevant methods.  

Digital Collections & Scholarship: Manages the creation of digital content within the Library (e.g. scanning), ensuring that industry standards and best practices are followed.

Public Services: Interacts with the public and present the needs of the public to creators and curators.

Preservation Committee: Writes the digital preservation policy, develops implementation plans, and reviews them annually. 

Rare Books & Special Collections: Manages the acquisition, processing of, and access to born-digital materials relevant to RBSC collections, as well as those created from digitization of analog materials, as part of the Digital Collections Advisory Group. 

Regional History Center & University Archives: Manages the acquisition, processing of, and access to born-digital materials relevant to RHC/UA collections, as well as those created from digitization of analog materials, as part of the Digital Collections Advisory Group. The Regional History Center acquires, preserves, and makes available to the public the most significant historical records for the eighteen northernmost counties of Illinois. The University Archives serve as the repository for all official records of Northern Illinois University that have historical and administrative value. 

Southeast Asia Collection: Manages the acquisition, processing of, and access to born-digital materials relevant to SEA collections, as well as those created from digitization of analog materials, as part of the Digital Collections Advisory Group. Southeast Asia digital content includes materials held by NIU and contributed materials from partner institutions. 

Technology Services: Facilitates access to the offsite host through the Department of Information Technology. Ensures that backups of the digital collections repository server and institutional repository server are performed. 

Technical Services: Responsible for ingestion and maintenance of digital objects in the digital collections repository and the Huskie Commons institutional repository. Manages the creation of all metadata to ensure compliance with industry standards, best practices, and local policies. Responsible for implementing digital preservation plans, including the deposit of digital assets into long-term storage.

This policy was written by the Preservation Committee in 2016 and approved on 3/8/2017. It will be reviewed annually to assure timely revisions as technology progresses and preservation strategies and experience mature.