Long-term digital preservation for JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services

Roman. Dancing Lar. 1st century CE. Smith College, Van Buren Antiquities Collection.

Digital collections represent years of investment. Preserving them means more than storing files—it means ensuring they remain usable, understandable, and accessible as technology changes over time.

Portico provides the preservation service that supports JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services. Together, they help institutions manage digital collections today while protecting them for the future.

Built on trusted preservation expertise

For more than twenty years, Portico has worked with libraries and publishers to preserve scholarly content for the long term. 

Preservation activities are guided by established community practices, including the OAIS Reference Model and the NDSA Levels of Digital Preservation. These frameworks help ensure that digital materials remain authentic, secure, and usable over time.

Why preservation matters

Digital collections are vulnerable to a range of risks that routine backups alone cannot address. Files may become inaccessible as software changes, storage systems fail, or formats fall out of use.

Long-term preservation is designed to address these challenges by maintaining the integrity of digital content and preparing it for future access.

Preservation as part of your workflow

JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services makes it possible to identify content for preservation as part of your existing collection management workflow.

Once content is submitted, Portico carries out a series of preservation activities that include:

  • Validating and preparing files for preservation
  • Recording technical and preservation metadata
  • Monitoring file integrity over time
  • Securely storing preservation packages in geographically distributed environments
  • Managing content as preservation standards and technologies evolve

These activities take place behind the scenes, allowing institutions to incorporate preservation into their existing stewardship practices without maintaining their own preservation infrastructure.

A shared commitment to long-term access

Portico and JSTOR are both part of ITHAKA, a nonprofit dedicated to expanding access to knowledge and education.

By combining JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services with Portico’s preservation expertise, institutions can manage, preserve, and protect digital collections within a coordinated, mission-driven framework designed for long-term stewardship.

Learn more

Preservation is one part of a broader digital stewardship workflow.  Curious about how JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services helps institutions manage, share, and preserve digital collections? Learn more about digital stewardship .