APTrust Timeline

Since its inception in 2011, the Academic Preservation Trust (APTrust) has grown from a shared vision among a handful of universities to a robust consortium dedicated to collaborative digital preservation. What began as a conversation among library and technology leaders quickly evolved into a member-driven initiative to address the rising challenges of preserving digital content. Over the years, APTrust has built not only a trusted preservation infrastructure but also a vibrant community of practitioners and institutions committed to safeguarding scholarly and cultural records. This timeline highlights key milestones that reflect the consortium’s growth, technological evolution, and ongoing commitment to service, collaboration, and resilience.

  • August 2011: University of Virginia Dean of Libraries Karin Wittenborg and James Hilton, then Chief Information Officer, convened a meeting of colleagues from six universities (Duke University, Emory University, Johns Hopkins University, University of Maryland, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State University) to discuss the challenges of preserving the growing amount of digital content. The group invited five additional like-minded institutions to become founding members of the consortium: Columbia University, University of Michigan, University of Notre Dame, Stanford University, and Syracuse University. Each founding member recognized the value of leveraging joint resources and defining common goals. With these principles, the Academic Preservation Trust was born.
  • November 2012: First full-time APTrust employee hired.
  • October 2013: First Membership Meeting held at Johns Hopkins University.
  • April 2014: Architecture and coding began on the APTrust preservation repository, Fluctus (frontend) and Bagman (backend), using Fedora and Ruby on Rails to manage file and object metadata based on member-driven features to meet Trusted Digital Repository requirements such as audit trails, replication strategies, and risk management.
  • May 2014: A governance framework was established, with a Governing Board and two advisory groups, one focusing on content and the other on technology. These two groups were later combined into a single Advisory Committee.
  • December 2014: First deposit into APTrust by the University of Cincinnati, marking the official start of production operations.
  • 2016: Established working groups to guide governance, technical development, and preservation policies. This was a partial evolution of prior committees and group structures.
  • June 2016: APTrust joined the National Digital Stewardship Alliance.
  • August 2016: UVA Law Library joins as the first Associate Member, sponsored by the University of Virginia.
  • October 2016: APTrust joins the Digital Preservation Coalition as an Associate Member.
  • January 2017: The second generation of APTrust’s preservation repository, Pharos (frontend) and Exchange (backend), is deployed, replacing Fedora with Postgres. Work began sometime in Summer 2015.
  • December 2017: As a founding member of the Digital Preservation Services Collaborative, signed the first version of the Digital Preservation Declaration of Shared Values.
  • February 2018: Virginia Wesleyan becomes the first Associate Member external to a Sustaining Member, sponsored by the University of Virginia.
  • March 2018: The first version of DART (Digital Archivist Resource Tool), initially called EasyStore, was released for packing and uploading content to APTrust.
  • May 2018: Introduced Basic Archive storage class for cold long-term storage, reducing costs.
  • April 2019: First automated deposit pipeline from Fulcrum, a publishing unit and Associate Member from the University of Michigan.
  • May 2019: Introduced Deep Archive storage class for frozen long-term storage, reducing costs even more.
  • September 2019: Total stored data exceeded 100 TB, reflecting increasing member engagement.
  • June-August 2021: First mass restoration of 16 TB of content from North Carolina State University after a disaster incident, with APTrust providing leadership during the post-mortem. All content was restored successfully and with integrity.
  • March 2022: Two part-time positions are combined to create the Executive Director role.
  • September 2022: Members have deposited over 1 million files.
  • November 2022:  Deployed the third generation of our preservation repository, Registry (frontend) and Preservation Services (backend), significantly increasing deposit capacity and improving retrieval efficiency. This was the first version of our repository to accept bagged content using the Beyond the Repository BagIt Profile.
  • May 2024: Upgrade to Full Membership in the Digital Preservation Coalition after they launch a DPC Americas office.
  • August 2024: Surpassed 500 TB of unique data stored, reflecting sustained repository growth.
  • December 2024: Celebrated 10 years of production with a t-shirt contest, reflecting a decade of reliable, uninterrupted digital preservation services.
  • February 2025: Repository grows to over 600 TB of unique data. Between March 2024 and February 2025, the repository grew at an average rate of 1.7 TB/day.
Line graph titled “Deposits Growth Over Time, 2/1/2025,” showing APTrust deposits rising from near zero in 2014 to nearly 600 TB by early 2025.
Line graph titled “Deposits Growth Over Time, 2/1/2025,” showing APTrust deposits rising from near zero in 2014 to nearly 600 TB by early 2025.