Project to Production: Digital Preservation at the Houses of Parliament, 2010-2020

The Parliamentary Archives is responsible for preserving and providing access to the historical records of the UK Parliament, a collection of national, and indeed international, importance which encompasses a wide range of digital content, created and used in an ever changing environment. Since 2010 a staged project has led to the successful implementation of an operational digital repository. The transition from project to production allows the Parliamentary Archives to reflect on the organisation’s progress in digital preservation. However, the deployment of a production digital repository also allows the Parliamentary Archives to outline future goals. The project has demonstrated the viability of implementing digital preservation infrastructure. The challenge remains to embed digital preservation as a business as usual activity. Received 16 January 2015 | Accepted 10 February 2015 Correspondence should be addressed to Christopher Fryer, Senior Digital Archivist, Parliamentary Archives, Houses of Parliament, London, SW1A 0PW, United Kingdom. Email: [email protected] An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 10 International Digital Curation Conference. The International Journal of Digital Curation is an international journal committed to scholarly excellence and dedicated to the advancement of digital curation across a wide range of sectors. The IJDC is published by the University of Edinburgh on behalf of the Digital Curation Centre. ISSN: 1746-8256. URL: http://www.ijdc.net/ Copyright rests with the authors. This work is released under a Creative Commons Attribution (UK) Licence, version 2.0. For details please see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/uk/ International Journal of Digital Curation 2015, Vol. 10, Iss. 2, 12–22 12 http://dx.doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v10i2.378 DOI: 10.2218/ijdc.v10i2.378 doi:10.2218/ijdc.v10i2.378 Christopher Fryer | 13