Digital Preservation in the Cloud: Strategies, Costs, and Good Practices

Instructor: Nathan Tallman, Academic Preservation Trust
When: Wednesday, November 11th and 18th, 11am - 1pm ET
RSVP deadline: Monday, November 2nd

Este evento contará con la interpretación simultánea de inglés al español.

Workshop description:

Cloud storage and computing offer powerful capabilities for digital preservation—scalability, redundancy, and access to tools that would be difficult to maintain on-premises. But they also introduce new complexities: unpredictable costs, vendor lock-in, questions of trust and integrity, and workflows that don’t always translate from local environments.

This two-session virtual workshop helps cultural heritage professionals make informed decisions about using the cloud for digital preservation. Whether you’re evaluating cloud options for the first time or refining an existing program, you’ll leave with practical vocabulary, assessment tools, and a concrete action plan.

Format: The workshop will take place over two 2-hour sessions via Zoom Webinar, scheduled 1 week apart, with a guided self-assessment worksheet completed between sessions.

Intended Audience: Archivists, librarians, curators, IT professionals, and administrators working in cultural heritage organizations of any size. No prior cloud experience is required. The workshop is designed to be accessible to newcomers while offering substantive content for experienced practitioners. 

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Distinguish between cloud service models (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) and storage tiers (hot, cold, frozen) and explain how they relate to preservation workflows.
• Identify the primary cost drivers in cloud-based preservation and apply basic FinOps strategies to manage them.
• Describe good practices for fixity checking, independence of copies, and format identification in cloud environments.
• Use foundational DevOps and automation vocabulary to communicate effectively with IT and finance colleagues.
• Assess their organization’s digital preservation readiness using the NDSA Levels and DPC Rapid Assessment Model.
• Draft a preliminary action plan with concrete next steps for their organization.

Instructor Bio

Nathan Tallman is the Executive Director of Academic Preservation Trust (APTrust), a consortium of academic and cultural heritage institutions that runs a cloud-based digital preservation service. He has researched digital preservation infrastructure and storage for ten years. With colleagues from APTrust and the California Digital Library, he conceived and led the iPRES 2025 workshop, "Navigating Digital Preservation in the Cloud: Lessons, Strategies, and Good Practices." He has previously worked at Penn State University and the University of Cincinnati in digital presentation and collections roles.