At Duke Kunshan University, almost everything we create is digital.

These include:

• Administrative records: policies, meeting minutes, reports
• Digital collections: photos, audio and video recordings, oral histories
• Campus memory: student publications, event documentation

Imagine a historian 50 years from now trying to reconstruct what it meant to study or teach at DKU in 2025. They would need more than printed reports; they would need access to Word documents, emails, databases, and images once stored on servers, cloud platforms, or even old hard drives.

At first glance, it might seem easier to care for modern digital records than for fragile manuscripts or rare books. After all, centuries-old paper requires careful handling and special storage, while a PDF or JPEG is just a click away. But when we think in terms of decades—or even centuries—digital files can actually be much more fragile: formats become obsolete, storage devices fail, and without care, important memories can vanish.

To address this challenge, Duke Kunshan University (DKU) Library has established a world-class digital preservation and access framework:

• Archivematica: the long-term preservation system that ensures files remain safe and accessible.
• AtoM (Access to Memory): the public access platform that makes digital heritage discoverable and usable.

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Digital Preservation Workflow

By implementing these systems, DKU Library supports an OAIS compliant Digital Preservation Program to ensure enduring access to stable and sustainable formats.

Steps in our workflow include:

1. Collect and ingest digital materials
2. Verify file integrity and security (virus scanning, checksum generation)
3. Convert to stable, preservation-ready formats (e.g., PDF/A, TIFF, WAV)
4. Store securely with integrity checks to prevent data loss
5. Publish accessible versions to the AtoM platform for discovery and use

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Supported Formats and Media

One of the most important steps in long-term preservation is converting files to preservation formats.

• Preservation formats are file types chosen for long-term stability and accessibility.
• Acceptable formats are the formats in which records are often created and transferred; these may be migrated into preservation formats, or monitored until conversion becomes necessary.

Formats and hardware not listed below may be accepted on a case-by-case basis.

Record Type	Preferred Formats	Acceptable Formats
Textual Records	PDF/A	PDF, TXT, DOC, HTML, DOCX, RTF, ODT, ODP, PPTX, PPT, WPD, XML
Images	TIFF	JPG, BMP, GIF, PNG
Tabular Data	Original Format	CSV, XLS, XLSX, TSV
Audio	WAV	MP3, WMA, FLAC, AIFF, MIDI
Video	FFV1/LPCM in MKV	MOV, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, AVI, FLV, SWF, WMV
Websites	WARC	HTML, or submit a list of URLs if websites are still active
E-mail	MBOX	PST, Maildir

Supported media with current hardware:

With our existing setup (standard computers equipped with DVD drives), DKU Library is currently able to read and image CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray Discs.

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Why This Matters

Just as preserving a fifteenth-century book requires expert handling, preserving today’s emails, images, and datasets requires specialized expertise, technology, and ongoing commitment.

By investing in digital preservation now, DKU Library ensures that the story of our university—our research, our teaching, and our student experience—remains accessible not just for us, but for generations to come.