As we begin a new year, we’re pleased to share an update on our shared mission to preserve the scholarly record. With the support of 1,000+ libraries and 1,000+ publishers, Portico is preserving an ever-increasing set of content, carrying out important research on emerging and future preservation needs, and piloting an initiative to preserve historical content from under-represented communities. 

Expanding the digital archive: Portico continues to add a growing stream of e-journal, e-book, and digital collection content into the archive. As a result, the number of “archival units,” or items being preserved (such as journal articles, books, newspaper issues, or documents) has grown to 135 million, with the number of files being preserved in the Portico archive surpassing 2.2 billion in 2022. We now have a total of 1,031 participating publishers from 80 countries and 1,014 libraries from 21 countries supporting the archive.

Research on preservation of complex content: In addition to our day-to-day work with content preservation, we always look for ways to build on our expertise to serve the emerging and future needs of our participants. In partnership with NYU Libraries, Portico began work in 2022 on the Embedding Preservability for New Forms of Scholarship project, which is funded by the Mellon Foundation. 

This work builds on an earlier project, Enhancing Services to Preserve New Forms of Scholarship, which produced guidelines to help publishers plan for the preservation of complex, non-traditional forms of publication, such as those with embedded audio or video, 3D visualizations, or non-linear modes of navigation. The current phase of the project tests those initial guidelines by embedding a small team of preservation specialists into publisher workflows and platform teams to develop practical, evidence-based suggestions for preservation at scale. 

The team collaborating on this work includes representatives from NYU Libraries, Portico, University of Michigan Libraries, and LOCKSS, and we look forward to sharing our recommendations with the community.

 Preserving content from under-represented communities: In 2022, we initiated work on a pilot project to include in the Portico archive important under-represented content that may be at risk because it is not preserved. The content from Ozarks Afro-American Heritage Museum Online is now being preserved in Portico. More recently, the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media signed an agreement to work with us to preserve two projects highlighting the history of under-represented communities: the Pilbara Aboriginal Strike and Bracero History Archive, and work has begun on preserving these. We also continue to work closely with the Emmett Till Memory Project as they seek funding for the next stage of their project, which Portico will play a role in preserving. 

We welcome the community’s input on our work; please feel free to reach out to us at support@portico.org with questions or feedback. We look forward to working with you in 2023.