Supporting practical preservation work and making it sustainable with SPRUCE

The SPRUCE Project has applied community oriented approaches to support and sustain digital preservation activity. An emphasis on practitioner requirements and focused agile development has enabled the updating and refinement of key digital preservation toolsets that meet user needs. The capture and sharing of these requirements has provided a detailed snapshot of current curation practice, providing insight into practical practitioner needs for those able to fund and support tool and service development. A variety of collaborative initiatives have developed online resources and forums for supporting digital preservation activity. SPRUCE has begun constructing a toolset to support managers and practitioners in making the case to fund and sustain digital preservation activity. As SPRUCE enters its final half year, this paper provides an outline of key achievements as well as thoughts on the effectiveness (or otherwise) of some of the more innovative or unconventional approaches taken by the Project.