How APTrust Works

Academic Preservation Trust (APTrust) is a consortium committed to digitally preserving cultural heritage content. Our community is open, inclusive, and transparent; we support and learn from each other. Our members include small and large organizations, beginners and experts, lone arrangers and international leaders. Our preservation repository collects many forms of content, supports administrative access, and augments the preservation strategies of individual member institutions. APTrust leverages institutions’ separate investments and accelerates their program development by providing a flexible preservation repository that fits anywhere in their strategy.

Community and Governance

While UVA Library hosts APTrust, we are a member-governed organization. Ultimate authority lies in our Governing Board, with much work done by our Advisory Committee. Additionally, we have a vibrant set of interest and working groups. We meet in person at least once yearly, usually at one of our member institutions, to connect, discuss governance issues, exchange ideas and good practices, and create shared strategies.

Technical Workflows

APTrust’s preservation repository uses BagIt bags for members to deposit and restore digital objects. We provide tools (DART, Partner Tools), both desktop and command line, that members can use for manual and automated deposit; members are also free to use other tools (such as Bagit-Python and AWS CLI) or to create their own. After members create bags that meet APTrust’s requirements, they upload them to an S3 storage bucket using our tools or their own. Registry, APTrust’s preservation repository, then ingests the bags, performing several preservation actions. 

Objects stored in Registry undergo various preservation activities and can be updated as needed. Members are to delete objects and files and can restore objects and files at any time. All ingest, deletion, and restoration activities can be monitored in Registry’s web interface or using our member API. A demo system is available for members to test and develop their workflows.

For Archivists

For Practitioners

  • APTrust can add a preservation layer to any digital content management system. E.g., CONTENTdm, Fedora, Samvera and Hyrax, and Archivematica.
  • DART is a valuable tool for packaging and transferring digital content that even non-members use in their workflows, requiring no coding.
    • The GUI is user-friendly and well-documented.
    • You can add required and custom metadata with ease.
    • Facilitates easy export/import of configurations for easy deployment across the workforce to distribute preservation activity wherever content is created, collected, or managed.
    • Provides information that easily integrates into a quality assurance process.
  • APTrust has publicly available policies, guidelines, and governance documents, making APTrust one of the most transparent preservation networks.
  • We have a proven track record of successful mass-restoration events without data loss.

For Developers

  • APTrust has various well-documented tools for flexible integration options.
    • DART – desktop GUI or server flavors to create and upload content packages, import/export configurations, plugin architecture, and user- and developer-focused documentation (including API).
    • Partner Tools – command line tools to create and upload content packages and retrieve preservation metadata, easy to integrate into scripts, well documented with standardized exit codes.
    • Member API – well-documented API (OpenAPI, v3) to retrieve preservation metadata from APTrust Registry.
  • APTrust’s modern, cloud-native architecture allows easy integration into commercial and locally developed systems.  Add preservation storage wherever needed, and it makes sense in your preservation strategy.
  • APTrust staff’s strong expertise and experience are available for consultation with members and often the wider community.
  • We are an open-source shop. All code is publicly available on GitHub.

For Administrators