EAPSI: Understanding the Development of Sustainable Information Infrastructures for Digital Preservation to Support Marginalized Communities

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The long-term preservation of digital information requires sustainable infrastructure. Social and technical elements, including people, organizations, hardware, software, and communication technologies, combine to form infrastructures that support preservation and access to digital information such as research data and personal records. This research seeks to understand the lifecycles and outcomes of digital preservation projects, focusing on projects whose goals included supporting communities experiencing identity, memory, and accountability crises such as children in care. In order to inform future infrastructure development, the goals of this study are to identify those factors that contribute to successful sustainable infrastructure development, to understand the types of challenges that arise in the development process and how those challenges are overcome. This research will be conducted in collaboration with Dr. Joanne Evans at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Australia has a strong public records infrastructure, making this site an ideal location for this project. Findings from this research could inform the development and study of recordkeeping infrastructures in the United States.This research employs a mixed methods approach, pairing a large-scale survey with in-depth semi-structured interviews and observations. Using a theoretical framework based on theories of infrastructure development this study seeks to understand the outcomes of digital information and research data management projects funded by the Australian National Data Service (ANDS). This study of ANDS-funded projects will be one of the first to look at an entire ecosystem of federally-funded projects, generating baseline data that will provide insight into what factors contribute to successful digital preservation infrastructure development. This NSF EAPSI award is funded in collaboration with the Australian Academy of Sciences.