Research Guides: Records Management: Digital content

Digital content sustainability

Use this section to identify your organization’s risks and needs related to digital/electronic systems where records management takes place. What risks are acceptable to your organization, and why?

For IT security guidance, see the Division of Information Technology's Security page.

For guidance specific to managing and curating research data, see Libraries' Data Services.

Sustainability Category	Questions to Ask
Systems inventory	What hardware, software, and platforms does your organization use? Who has access to each system? For what purposes?
Economic factors	What is the business model of each system? Is there any chance its business model will change? Who maintains your systems? Are they proprietary and maintained by a corporation? Are they open-source and maintained by an institution or volunteers? How long will maintenance continue? How do you access the systems? (University license, free and open-source, unofficial copy, free but collects user data)
Data portability	Can you export all data you created on the system? Can you use files and software on multiple operating systems? Can you use files and data created with one software and version in other software/versions? How common are the hardware and software? Do you anticipate having long-term access to the hardware, software, or platform?
File format sustainability	For text: Should the file contents maintain specific formatting across different software? Should file contents be editable? For audio: Should the file be playable in stereo? Editable as separate tracks? Sampled? For video: Should the file include separate audio and video tracks? Should it include a caption file? For data: How should you and others be able to manipulate and interpret the data, e.g. visualizing, cleaning, or transforming? What schema, metadata, or other documentation would others need in order to work with this data?