About the lab

The Digital Preservation Lab (DPL) was established in 2017 to serve as the production and research hub for the library's "born-digital" preservation program. Our main focus to-date centers on the development and implementation of standard processes to preserve the library's born-digital content — especially unique resources from the Special Collections Research Center — that exist on external media such as floppy disks, optical disks, and external hard drives.

We are sharing our workflows, equipment configurations, and research findings in hope that colleagues in the digital preservation, library, and archives communities will find them useful. You are encouraged to consult, use, and adapt things we've done for your own needs.

Workflows

See how we preserve digital-born archival content — whether stored on floppy disk, USB, or other media — by examining our processes step-by-step.

Equipment

Learn about our current inventory of vintage, off the shelf, and specialized computing equipment, along with relevant specifications and configurations.

Reports

Discover the key research and reports that laid the foundation for the lab’s preservation philosophy, processes, and purchases.

More about our work

To learn more about the library’s digital preservation efforts, check out the Bits and Pieces blog, including posts relating to the Digital Preservation Lab. If you have a question about something not on this site or our blog, feel free to email us at .  

The lab is managed by the Digital Preservation Unit, which is part of Preservation Services. Our broader goal is to facilitate preservation of digital material across the library and University of Michigan communities. If you want to talk about specific digital preservation needs, please see the Digital Preservation Consultation Services page