This document discusses the cooperative digital preservation model implemented by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints across numerous organizations. Key aspects include developing records management plans with each organization, acquiring and processing records according to criteria, and implementing a digital preservation system with support from the IT department. The approach involves cooperation between the Church History Department and other Church departments and institutions to ensure their important digital content is successfully preserved for future generations.

1. Working Across Organizations to Successfully Implement
Cooperative Digital Preservation
Future Perfect Conference 2012: Digital Preservation by Design (March 2012)
Abstract Besides the Church History Department,
a number of other departments support
This paper discusses the cooperative,
Church functions and activities. Examples
outreaching model of digital preservation that is
of these departments include Auditing,
being successfully implemented by the Church
Education, Family History, Finance,
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints across
General Counsel, Media Services, Physical
numerous organizations.
Facilities, Public Affairs, Security, Temples,
Welfare Services, etc.
Introduction to the Church of Jesus
In 1966, the Deseret Management
Christ of Latter-day Saints Corporation was organized to manage
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day some of the commercial companies
Saints is a worldwide Christian church with affiliated with the Church. Today, this
more than 14.4 million corporation owns and oversees media,
members and 28,784 insurance, and hospitality businesses.
congregations. With
headquarters in Salt Executive Support for Digital
Lake City, Utah Preservation
(USA), the Church
Due to the Church’s scriptural mandate
operates three
to keep and preserve records, digital
universities, a business
preservation is extremely important to
college, 136 temples, and thousands of
Church leadership. This translates to strong
seminaries and institutes of religion around
and consistent executive sponsorship plus
the world that enroll more than 700,000
ongoing funding and IT support, which are
students in religious training.
absolutely critical to digital preservation
The Church has a scriptural mandate to
success.
keep records of its proceedings and
In addition, the Office of the Church
preserve them for future generations.
Historian and Recorder provides constant
Accordingly, the Church has been creating
and vigilant oversight of the Church’s
and keeping records since 1830, when it
preservation efforts. This is one reason why
was organized. A Church Historian’s Office
the Church Historian and Recorder is the
was formed in the 1840s, and in 1972 it was
Executive Director of the Church History
renamed the Church History Department.
Department.
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2. Responsibilities of the Church The plan identifies all records series (i.e.,
History Department collections) produced by the department
and sets a retention schedule and a final
The Church History Department has disposition for each collection. Some
responsibility for collecting, processing, schedules call for records to be destroyed as
providing access to, and preserving records soon as their active life is over. Others
of enduring value that originate from all the require the records to be kept for a number
Church organizations identified previously. of years in order to satisfy legal and/or
With such a broad range of records- government compliance requirements.
producing sources, the Church History On average, less than ten percent of the
Department has implemented an collections are given a final disposition of
outreaching, cooperative approach to “archive,” which means the collection
digital preservation that is proving to be should be preserved for future generations
remarkably effective. because of its enduring value.
The records management plan also
identifies which collections should be
digitized (if they are not born-digital) for
easier access and for digital preservation.
An Appraisal Advisory Committee,
composed of experienced archivists,
reviews the department’s records
management plan and helps with
appraising records for preservation value
Church History Library before giving final approval to the plan.
at Temple Square in Salt Lake City Because of this outreaching, cooperative
approach to records management, each
At the heart of this approach is the
Church department has a records
Church History Library Division. Within
management plan in place today that meets
this Division are the following teams which
the needs of the department as well as the
are relevant to this paper—Records
Church.
Management, Acquisitions, Archival
Developed in 2009, a Collections
Processing, and Integration and Access. The
Development Policy provides the following
unity and coordinated efforts of these teams
criteria for Church History Department
are a major factor contributing to the
acquisition of materials—
success of the program.
The outreaching, cooperative approach 1. Applicability to the Church History
begins with the Records Management Department’s purpose
Team. This crucial team works with the 2. Provenance (i.e., the collection’s origin,
Records Coordinator of each Church authenticity, and history of ownership)
department to develop a detailed records 3. Historical significance
management plan for that department. 4. Usefulness, including expected
frequency of access
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3. 5. Relative value compared to existing Church Information and
Church History Department holdings Communications Services
6. Anticipated costs of acquiring,
processing, providing access, and As mentioned previously, IT support is
preserving absolutely critical to digital preservation
7. Physical condition (if not born-digital) success. Recognizing this, Church
and prospects of long term viability leadership provided the Church History
8. Legality of title Department with a dedicated digital
preservation IT team from Church
As may be inferred from these Information and Communications Services
acquisition criteria, virtually all the records (ICS). This critical team consists of a digital
that are acquired by the Church History preservation solutions manager, software
Department are candidates for preservation developers, quality assurance engineers,
because the criteria ensure that only records and application support engineers. The
of historical value—and thus enduring preservation IT team also has access to a
value—are accepted. software architect, and works closely with
Records and artifacts may be donated to the digital preservation product manager
the Church History Library. If they are who reports to the Church History
accepted per the acquisition criteria listed Department.
on the previous page, the Library’s As with the Church History Library
Acquisitions Team is responsible to process Division, the unity and coordinated efforts
the records for digital preservation. of these team members are crucial to the
Processing of archival records that success of Church History’s outreaching,
originate within the various Church cooperative digital preservation program.
organizations is performed by the Library’s Working cooperatively together, the
Archival Processing Team. One member of extended preservation team implemented
this team has the title of Digital Archivist. the Digital Records Preservation System
Processing steps for digital preservation (DRPS) illustrated on the next page.
include digitizing (if needed), digital DRPS is based on Ex Libris Rosetta—a
curation, and cataloging. specialized application that provides
Also, the Integration and Access Team configurable preservation workflows and
sets metadata standards and specifies how advanced preservation planning functions.
records are to be organized. NetApp StorageGRID is the DRPS
When the Church History Department storage layer. It provides Information
acquires records, whether donated or Lifecycle Management (ILM) for the DRPS
created by Church organizations, it takes archive. In order to support ILM migration
over stewardship of those records. In effect, of preservation files from disk to tape,
the donors and Church organizations StorageGRID utilizes IBM Tivoli Storage
transfer responsibility for preserving their Manager as an interface to tape libraries.
records to the Church History Department.
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4. DRPS also employs software extensions that One example of this occurs with the
were developed by the ICS preservation team Media Services Department. This prolific
(shown in the red boxes below). department generates multiple petabytes of
production audiovisual data annually in
order to support the Church’s worldwide
communications needs.
To illustrate, last Christmas the Church
launched a new website as a gift to the
world that provides free Bible videos of the
birth, life, death, and resurrection of the
Lord Jesus Christ (biblevideos.lds.org).
Architecture of the Church History Department’s
Digital Records Preservation System Nativity scene from biblevideos.lds.org
(DRPS)
DRPS is a dark archive—meaning that Viewable with a free mobile app, these
delivery of requested records is only digital videos were produced by the Media
provided to the department or institution Services Department.
that produced the records. Likewise, About 40% of Media Services’ projects
records in the archive may only be are targeted for archiving. However, only a
discovered by the organization that portion meets Church History acquisition
produced the records. Furthermore, criteria. The others are required by Media
authorized access requests are serviced by Services to support long term production
DRPS staff; thus producers of records do needs. Media Services’ projects tend to be
not have direct access to the DRPS archive. cascading, meaning that something created
This arrangement enhances security of the today will likely be used many times in the
archive. future to augment other projects (the Bible
videos are an example of such cascading).
Outreaching, Cooperative Digital Since DRPS was implemented to meet
Preservation the needs of all the Church, Church
History’s outreaching, cooperative
In some cases, a department’s records
approach to digital preservation
management plan calls for certain records
accommodates Media Services’ need to
to be archived that do not fit the Church
archive projects that do not meet Church
History Department’s acquisition criteria.
History acceptance criteria.
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5. However, a different stewardship model team collaborated with Media Services in
applies to these projects. In effect, the order to automate the DRPS ingest process.
Church History Department makes DRPS Many considerations were involved to
available as a service to archive them. make the automation seamless. At the top
The DRPS service model requires that of the list were issues with cataloging and
Media Services (i) be responsible for the discovery.
master catalog of these projects, (ii) provide The Church History Library catalogs its
required preservation metadata, and (iii) holdings at the collection level. Ex Libris
assist with future file format Aleph is the catalog software, and
transformations. collections are discovered with Primo.
In return, the DRPS operations team On the other hand, Media Services
manages the projects once they have been catalogs its projects at the item level. A
ingested into DRPS. Visual Resources Library (VRL) was
Another example of cooperative digital developed by ICS for catalog software, and
preservation applies to Media Services’ discovery was also custom developed.
born-digital projects. In order to bridge these differences, the
Those born-digital projects which meet ICS integrated catalog team, in response to
Church History acquisition criteria may be Church History direction, implemented an
needed for production purposes many instance of Aleph for Media Services that
years after they are archived (e.g., the Bible can be discovered using Primo.
videos). Therefore, the DRPS operations Media Services was responsible for
team has agreed to ingest born-digital migrating its VRL catalog to this instance of
projects into DRPS in their production file Aleph, which they were willing to do
format (DNxHD wrapped in an MXF because of anticipated DRPS benefits.
container) rather than the preferred Another challenge of automated ingest
preservation format (Motion JPEG 2000 was automation of metadata extraction for
wrapped in an MXF container). digitized projects. To meet this challenge,
Years from now, when these born-digital the ICS preservation team developed a tool
files are not as likely to be needed for that automatically extracts metadata from
production work, they will be transformed either instance of Aleph, depending on
to Motion JPEG 2000 (MJ2) files with whether the project to be ingested falls
assistance from Media Services. under the DRPS service model or the
This cooperative approach meets the Church History acquisition model.
needs of Media Services while reducing The next step was to integrate DRPS
Church History preservation risk by with Media Services’ systems. This required
minimizing the number of file format the DRPS operations team to develop
transformations required to ultimately workflows in conjunction with Media
achieve the MJ2 preservation format. Services that define the data and metadata
Because of the enormous capacity of flows between the systems. Working
Media Services’ files to be ingested into cooperatively, the teams finished the task
DRPS, the Church History/ICS preservation promptly.
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6. System integration also required DRPS acquisition criteria, however, so DRPS has
persistent identifiers (PIDs) to be passed been offered to the institutions as a service.
back to Aleph as well as the Media Asset Since these institutions do not have the
Management System so a project can be same kind of working relationship with the
requested for delivery from DRPS using the Church History Department as the Church
PID that DRPS created for that project. departments discussed previously, the
As a consequence of the DRPS service Church History preservation team
model explained previously, the Church developed a customized Memo of
History Department developed the Understanding for each institution that
following policy regarding the number of provides guidelines for working together in
copies to be kept in the DRPS archive (note: a cooperative manner.
“version” refers to file format Each Memo of Understanding covers the
transformations or physical records)— following topics—
The number of archived record copies (including a. Glossary of Digital Preservation Terms
version copies) to be maintained and/or managed by b. DRPS Overview
DRPS will be determined on a records collection basis c. DRPS Service Model
according to appraised value and availability of physical d. Pre-ingest Activities
records. Each determination will specify the number of e. Ingest Activities
physical version, previous version, and current version f. Ongoing DRPS Management and
copies to be maintained (including after ingest), as well as Access/Delivery Activities
location placement for each copy. The minimum number g. Service Level Agreements
of current version copies is two, and they must be placed h. Cost Agreements
in different locations. Three (or possibly more) current The DRPS operations team is currently
version copies are desirable if no physical version copy is
working with three of these institutions to
available and appraised value warrants such. The
begin ingesting the initial collections they
maximum number of previous version copies is two. All
copies are to be located so as to maximize physical safety have targeted for digital preservation.
of the records. Previous version copies should be BYU (Provo), however, decided to
deaccessioned from the archive when they can no longer implement its own instance of Rosetta in
be rendered or they no longer provide a useful purpose. order to perform a proof of concept test in
Another example of the Church History 2012 to determine if BYU will bring digital
outreaching, cooperative approach to preservation in-house. Because the Church
digital preservation involves the Church’s purchased an enterprise license for Rosetta,
institutions of higher learning. These BYU was able to install Rosetta without
institutions consist of Brigham Young incurring a license fee from Ex Libris.
University (BYU) located in Provo, Utah; A final example of Church History’s
BYU-Idaho; BYU-Hawaii; and the LDS cooperative approach to digital
Business College in Salt Lake City. preservation is related to fixity information
Each of these institutions has a records that is required to ensure DRPS data
management plan that identifies collections integrity.
the institution desires to preserve. Most of
the collections do not meet Church History
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7. In order to implement fixity information Secrets of Success
as early as possible in the preservation
Reflecting on reasons why the Church
process, and thus minimize data errors, the
History Department is enjoying success
DRPS operations team runs tools developed
with its outreaching, cooperative approach
by the ICS preservation team that create
to digital preservation, the preservation
fixity information for producer files before
team identified the following—
they are transferred to DRPS for ingest.
Therefore, producer departments need  Top down executive support and
not worry about generating fixity commitment to digital preservation.
information to preserve their records.  Internal cooperation between Church
History divisions.
Looking to the Future  External cooperation between Church
History (responsible for preservation
The Church History Department has also
tasks), Church Information and
reached out to the University of Utah
Communications Services (the
Library—offering to help preserve its
technology arm), and the records-
collection of records that relate to Church
producing departments/institutions.
history.
These are not trivial relationships.
The University of Utah is a public
university in Salt Lake City. Its Library has Getting down to a more personal level,
collected many records over the years about the outreaching, cooperative approach to
Utah history. Since the State of Utah was digital preservation explained in this paper
founded by pioneer members of the Church is also largely successful because the
in 1847, these records are of interest to the various teams involved (i) are willing to
Church History Department. learn and understand the needs of others,
The University of Utah Library has (ii) recognize and utilize the strengths and
expressed interest in the Church History expertise of others, and (iii) are willing to
Department’s offer, so future collaboration adopt best practices from each professional
will assure that these valuable historical discipline.
records are preserved digitally with DRPS.
Also, some Deseret Management Conclusion
Corporation businesses have recently The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
expressed interest in using DRPS as a Saints is making a substantial investment to
service to preserve some of their records. extend the reach of its Digital Records
So the outreaching, cooperative model of Preservation System, as described in this
digital preservation that is being paper. The benefits of doing this cannot be
successfully implemented by the Church of measured in financial terms, however.
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will Those benefits include building character
continue to expand as more organizations and strengthening families—both of which
come to understand the benefits of utilizing are designed to foster both personal and
DRPS to preserve their records of enduring family happiness.
value for future generations.
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