The Preservation Storage Criteria enumerates characteristics of digital preservation storage (as opposed to storage used for general operational needs). Audience --------- The audience for this document includes: - Consumers of all or parts of a digital preservation storage solution, ranging from institutions just starting out with preservation to institutions with established preservation programs, or - Providers of all or parts of a digital preservation storage solution Institutions should adapt the Criteria according to their local circumstances. Some criteria may only apply to particular components of an overall preservation storage solution, while other criteria may not be applicable to that organization. The Criteria may be viewed from different perspectives depending on the context. For example, the “Documented access” criterion is defined as “Provides immutable logs and/or reports that show all system access”. A storage service provider could interpret this criterion to mean that they are responsible for providing the logs and reports, while an institution purchasing preservation storage from a provider could interpret this criterion to mean that they expect to receive the logs and reports. What is Preservation Storage? -------- Preservation storage supports digital preservation -- “the series of managed activities necessary to ensure continued access to digital materials for as long as necessary” (DPC, 2015). Preservation storage can be considered, in part, within the context of the ISO OAIS Reference Model (CCSDS, 2012). In this context, Preservation storage covers the same functions as the OAIS functional entity “archival storage”, as well as the parts of other OAIS functional entities which are needed to store, maintain in storage, and retrieve from storage, Archival Information Packages or AIPs (Zierau & McGovern, 2014), illustrated in the [OO-IO Model][1]. For example: - Parts of “Preservation Planning” concerned with monitoring technology for storage and bit preservation solutions and practices, media migrations, agreement changes, and the organization and technology needed to fulfill preservation policies at the storage level; and Parts of “Data Management” that ensure a relationship between preserved data and identification of the data (metadata); and Parts of “Administration” concerned with policies and standards that relates to preservation at the storage level; and Parts of “Ingest” concerned with the coordination of updates of different data replica at the storage level. In addition to the context provided by the ISO OAIS Reference Model, preservation storage can be considered in terms of: - The evolving technological environment and supporting organization; and The evolving set of common understandings about digital preservation. How Can the Preservation Criteria be Used? ---- The criteria have been developed as a set of design attributes to consider for a Preservation Storage solution. These can be useful for both consumers and providers of Preservation Storage solutions. Some of the uses for the Criteria include: - To inform more detailed requirements for preservation storage - To identify gap areas in existing preservation storage - To evaluate or compare preservation storage solutions - To seed discussions with IT about preservation storage - To seed discussions within the digital preservation field - To provide instructional material on digital preservation - To review standards relevant to preservation storage What Else Needs to be Considered? ---- In addition to this Criteria, an individual consumer or institution needs to take into account criteria specific to their own requirements, practices, policies, regulations, laws, and environment in areas such as: - Confidentiality and privacy - Access - Risk management framework - Financial framework - Business continuity See the [Criteria Usage Guide][2] for additional key considerations, including cost, risk, and independence (DP Storage Working Group, 2019). The Criteria Usage Guide Version 2 and supporting materials will follow this release of Preservation Storage Criteria Version 4. How Were the Criteria Created? --- Following a community discussion at iPres 2015, the Criteria were originally developed by Kate Zwaard, Gail Truman, Sibyl Schaefer, Jane Mandelbaum, Nancy McGovern, Steve Knight and Andrea Goethals in preparation for an iPres 2016 workshop called “What is Preservation Storage?” (Goethals et al., 2016). Since the first version, Eld Zierau and Cynthia Wu joined the original authors to develop an improved version informed by community feedback; and Kate Zwaard, Gail Truman, and Steve Knight rolled off. Version 2 of the Criteria was released during a workshop at iPres 2018 and Versions 3 at iPres 2021. Andrea Goethals contributed through the final draft of Version 4. Version 4 is the current version of the Criteria. It is the first to include a mapping of the Criteria to various international standards used in digital preservation work, such as ISO 14721 and ISO 16363. Due to the substantial changes -- additions, modifications, and deletions-- between Version 3 and Version 4, documentation of the changes including a crosswalk to Version 3 numbering, accompanies Version 4. A candidate form of the latest version of the Criteria, premiered at iPres 2023 with a workshop and a revised game. Feedback from the workshop was incorporated into the final Version 4. To comment on the Criteria or to join the conversation, please join the dpstorage group at [https://groups.google.com/g/dpstorage][3]. For a list of conferences where the Criteria has been reviewed, please see: [https://osf.io/sjc6u/wiki/Presentations/][4]. For more information about the Criteria, including the development of Version 4, see the iPres 2019 paper: "[An Overview of the Digital Preservation Storage Criteria and Usage Guide][5]," (Zierau, Schaefer, McGovern & Goethals, 2019) and the IFLA Journal 2021 "[Deciding how to decide: Using the digital preservation storage criteria][6]," (Schaefer, McGovern, Zierau, Goethals, and Wu, 2021). [1]: https://wiki.dpconline.org/index.php?title=Outer_OAIS_-_Inner_OIAS_for_distribution_aspects [2]: https://osf.io/97gy6 [3]: https://groups.google.com/g/dpstorage [4]: https://osf.io/sjc6u/wiki/Presentations/ [5]: https://osf.io/fk538/ [6]: https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/130868