Connecting preservation planning and Plato with digital repository interfaces

An accepted digital preservation workflow is emerging in which file formats are identified and those believed to be at risk are migrated to what are perceived to be less risky formats. This raises important questions about what to convert and when, if at all. In other words, how to connect file identification and migration. This area has become known as preservation planning, and seeks to take account of a wide variety of factors that might impact preservation decisions. Broadly there are two approaches to preservation planning. One provided in some digital preservation systems is to simplify and reduce both the number of file formats stored and therefore limit the number of preservation tools needed based on accepted recommendations. A more thorough, flexible and possibly complex approach, supported by the Plato preservation planning tool developed by the Planets project, allows decisions on preservation actions to combine analysis of the characteristics of different file formats with specific local requirements, such as costs and resources. This paper shows how Plato can be integrated with digital repository software, in this case EPrints, to enable this powerful approach to be used effectively to manage content in repositories of different sizes and with varying degrees of preservation expertise and support. These tools are accessed via a common repository interface to enable repository managers, and others who do not specialise in preservation, to moderate decisions on preservation planning and to control preservation actions