Merritt Digital Preservation Repository – May 2024

May 31, 2024 Author: Eric LopatinCategories:

Merritt is a digital preservation repository from the University of California Curation Center (UC3) that enables the UC community to manage, archive, and share its valuable digital content.

Welcome to the Merritt service update for May 2024

New Content and Collections

Update: UC Santa Cruz AV Project

The UC Santa Cruz Library Special Collections & Archives department added new content to the following collections during the month of May. These are part of a major AV preservation project that involves digitization of AV materials. The associated ingest workflow entails staging zipped bags on locally maintained infrastructure and generating container batch manifests. These manifests are then submitted through the Merritt user interface and Merritt’s Ingest service pulls each container from the staging area for processing.

Bettina Aptheker papers MS157
Charis Wilson papers MS316
Esther Rice collection of Santa Cruz photographs MS367
Frank Kofsky Audio & Photo Collection of the Jazz and Rock Movement MS312
Grateful Dead records Media MS332
Grateful Dead records Artwork MS332
Harry Mayo Surfing Photography collection MS405
John E. Thorne papers MS423
League of Women Voters of Santa Cruz County Records MS286
Miriam Patchen papers MS161
Nina Graboi papers MS225

On a related note, the UC Libraries Born-Digital CKG is developing a common BagIt profile via the Digital Archives Resource Tool (DART). It follows protocols enumerated in the “Beyond the Repository” profile and is purposed for use across UC campuses and for promoting interoperability across repositories. A draft UC DART profile specification is currently under development.

Digital Preservation Community

iPRES Registration is Open + Overwhelming Number of New Submissions

Registration is now open for iPRES 2024. Earlier in the month, the iPRES Program Committee communicated they were “thrilled and overwhelmed by the amazing volume of submissions we received in response to our Call for Contributions for interactive formats,” such that a request for additional reviewers was made – exciting!

What We’re Working On

Ingest Queue Design

The team is now deep into the implementation phase to update Merritt’s queueing process which takes place when new content is ingested into the repository and database entries are subsequently recorded in its inventory. The new design is being implemented as part of a longstanding effort introduce more transparency into the repository’s ingest operations which in turn will provide much more granular feedback to depositors in terms of submission status. Further detail is available on upcoming queue states and state transition details.

Object Update Tools

Both ahead of (and to follow) the queue design, our team has worked on devising strategies to update digital objects. Our use cases include helping depositors address removing unwanted files, file naming convention changes, changes in object composition due to updated curation practices and storage savings among others. We look forward to sharing more information about these update strategies, many of which are designed to complement the Merritt’s Object Analysis prototype.

Repository Metrics for May

Holdings Snapshot

Holdings as of July 1, 2023, fiscal year start:	479.45 TB (one copy)
Holdings as of May 31, 2024	469.06 TB (one copy)
Holdings as of April 29, 2024	454.66
Deaccessioned Holdings (Dryad)	154 TB
Holdings as of March 28, 2024	607.96 TB
Holdings as of November 30, 2023	576.43 TB
Holdings as of October 30, 2023	571.69 TB
Holdings as of September 28, 2023	558.66 TB
Holdings as of August 28, 2023	532.08 TB
Holdings as of July 28, 2023	495.36 TB

Active collections in April (new files added – a single digital object can contain one or more files):

eScholarship	101,701
UC Berkeley Library Media Resource Center (MRC)	722
UC Berkeley School of Law, Robbins Collection	12,649
University and Jepson Herbaria Image Archive	1,730
UC Davis Library ETDs	334
UCI Library ETDs	158
UCLA Library ETDs	309
UC Santa Barbara Library ETDs	173
UC Santa Cruz Library AV Collections (noted in New Content and Collections, above)	1,695