The MetaArchive of Southern Digital Culture will discuss the first two years of deliverables (2004-2006) for their three year partnership for establishing a collaborative digital preservation network for southern cultural heritage materials. The MetaArchive of Southern Culture is a multi-institutional partner with the Library of Congress in their National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) and has established a distributed model for digital preservation. Headed by Emory University, this test-bed implementation network involves six different academic research libraries (Auburn University, Emory University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Florida State University, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, University of Louisville) as well as a strategic alliance with the Stanford University based LOCKSS Program and the Library of Congress.

During the first two years of this project the MetaArchive partnership has implemented a collaborative digital preservation network, has tested the LOCKSS toolset for scale (3 terabytes), for ingest (HTTP and OAI-PMH), and for reliability (total system failure). The group has also developed a collection-level conspectus that inter-operates with LOCKSS ingest plug-ins and collection selection policies of the group. Included in this presentation will be a discussion of the collaborative partnership agreements and the forthcoming work on the next phases of the project which include establishing a non-profit entity that specializes in digital preservation networks for cultural heritage institutions, creating a formalized business model to advance our collaborative paradigm outside of our Library of Congress partnership, to conduct document format tests involving LOCKSS on-access migration and batch migration strategies, and to implement a preservation management framework that incorporates other open-source preservation software tools capable of integrating with our current LOCKSS-based network.