Chronopolis Project launched to preserve at-risk digital information

SDSC, UCSDL, NCAR and UMIACS focus on cross-domain sharing for vital collections

The Chronopolis Digital Preservation Demonstration Project, one of the Library of Congress’ latest efforts to collect and preserve at-risk digital information, has been officially launched as a multi-member partnership to meet the archival needs of a wide range of cultural and social domains.

Chronopolis is a digital preservation data grid framework being developed by the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at UC San Diego, the UC San Diego Libraries (UCSDL), and their partners at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Colorado and the University of Maryland’s Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS).

A key goal of the Chronopolis project is to provide cross-domain collection sharing for long-term preservation. Using existing high-speed educational and research networks and mass-scale storage infrastructure investments, the partnership is designed to leverage the data storage capabilities at SDSC, NCAR, and UMIACS to provide a preservation data grid that emphasizes heterogeneous and highly redundant data storage systems.

“Chronopolis is part of a new breed of distributed digital preservation programs,” said Brian E.C. Schottlaender, a Principal Investigator on the project and UCSD University Librarian. “We are using a virtual organizational structure in order to assemble the best expertise and framework to provide data longevity, durability and access well into the next century.”

“The Chronopolis team leverages broad experience in the use and access of research data from the science and engineering community with deep experience from the library and archival communities on the preservation of cultural assets,” said Francine Berman, director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center at UCSD, and also a Principal Investigator for Chronopolis. “The project allows innovation in multiple dimensions and will give us experience with a scalable framework for developing preservation grids.”