Explore our Digital Collections
The U of T Scarborough Library's Digital Scholarship Unit (DSU) provides campus-specific digital scholarship support, including data, the digital humanities, digital collections building, digital archiving, and scholarly communications.
Our persistent identifiers are Archival Resource Keys (V) for several reasons that we talk about in this journal article. Our goal is to ensure consistent access to digital objects over time.
Unless otherwise specified in the record, objects in our collection are managed under the principles below. Additional information about ARKs may be found in our metadata dictionary.
Object Availability
Collection availability is subject to computing resources and staffing at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Sometimes, the system supporting this may go offline or be taken offline for routine maintenance.
We do not make special commitments to object availability for or beyond our organization’s lifetime. Neither do we set finite limits on object availability. We strive to provide access to objects for as long as we can.
Sometimes, and in accordance with our policies, content may be removed from the repository. In this case, you will be redirected to a page that is a record of what the object was.
Identifier Validity
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ARKs are created early in the object development phase and may not be bound to an object until that object is given a location in our digital collections.
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Once an ARK has been made public we will not reassign it to a separate object.
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When an object has been de-accessioned, we maintain the ARK record but re-direct to a page informing user of the removal of the object and preserving metadata to the best of our abilities and in accordance with our evolving take-down and weeding policies.
Content Invariance
The malleability of digital content makes its persistence a complex topic. Rather than insist that objects with ARKs never change, we evolve or overwrite digital objects in a way that preserves thematic continuity for many reasons, including:
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Access to higher quality scans of an original document
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Updates to metadata to reflect new understandings of a topic
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Maintenance of critical metadata when an object has been de-accessioned
Change History
Our ARK system does not store or reflect past versions of content, but these versions are maintained locally as part of the preservation workflows of our unit. You may be able to access past versions by contacting us directly.
We are inspired by and support the persistence vocabulary concepts presented in the article: “Persistence Statements: Describing Digital Stickiness”.
If you have any questions about our collections or the content above, please contact us at dsu.utsc@utoronto.ca