Digital Preservation

"In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice." In the process of designing institutionally scoped digital preservation services, I have been struck by a frequent disconnect between digital preservation theory and the existing practical and economic environment. My response, predictably, has been to attempt synthesis of more theory-practical, that! Yet my goal was to put together something strategically informative for institutional digital preservation service design, and as the theory has indeed been informative, it is gradually proving itself practical. I will present a current snapshot of this evolving work, how it addresses what I perceive to be some impracticalities in common digital preservation models, and its impact on the evolving design of the Stanford Digital Repository.