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Abstract:This essay selectively surveys recent findings on digital preservation in special collections settings and examines the challenges that prevent widespread implementation. Using the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa’s library to illustrate the situation facing many institutions, I discuss three types of barriers to digital preservation: workflow and procedural obstacles, resource limitations, and lack of buy-in.

Experiential learning programs are an effective method to teach data-focused research skills and statistical analysis. We examine the effects of a participatory research training program developed and executed by a data librarian and administered to library employees at a large academic library. The program aimed to improve research skills and increase research productivity. This study employs a survey within a concurrent mixed methods methodological framework to examine the outcomes of the training program. Our findings show that the program served as a low-cost, short-term, effective method of teaching data collection and quantitative analysis that increased participants’ knowledge of the research process, boosted their research confidence, and provided valuable data on library services for use by the participants and library administration.

This article surveys and analyzes archival literature and legal resources (primarily United States–focused) related to copyright considerations that archivists and other content managers must be aware of to effectively and legally maintain a collection of born-digital materials. These considerations include the centrality of copying to preservation actions, shifting definitions of ownership, unclear distinctions between published and unpublished content, digital rights management laws and technologies, and the layered copyrights that can exist in complex digital objects and their dependencies. Strategies for dealing with these challenges include securing rights ahead of time, adopting legal rationales related to orphan works and fair use, adapting practices from specialized digital preservation subfields, ensuring routine procedures adequately address copyright-related recordkeeping and risk management, and advocating for preservation-enabling copyright reforms. An examination of these issues and strategies in the context of current thinking about copyright suggests that while certain legal exceptions and existing rights frameworks can help to facilitate digital preservation activities, copyright will continue to be a barrier until significant reforms are enacted.