This paper examines how digital preservation programs can cultivate user trust outside the bounds of formal certification. Drawing on Yale University Library’s 2024 certification readiness assessment and the trust model proposed by Yakel et al., we explore how three user-centered factors—integrity, identification, and structural assurance—are enacted through Yale’s preservation activities and practices. We argue that trust can be built through transparent operations, responsive service design, and sustained stakeholder engagement. By mapping our work to this emergent model, we propose an alternative, practice-based approach to trustworthiness that complements, but does not depend on, external certification.

The paper explores the legal foundations and implementation strategies for the long-term preservation of open access journals by libraries, using the National Science and Technology Library (NSTL) of China as a case study. Open access journals rely on the Creative Commons (CC) license system to provide a legal basis for replication, storage, and distribution in long-term preservation. Libraries can clarify preservation rights through long-term cooperation agreements with publishers, balancing technical, legal, and collaborative relationships. NSTL has established a hierarchical preservation strategy that integrates international collaboration and localized collection, building a long-term preservation system covering 13,000 journals. To date, NSTL has secured preservation agreements with publishers for 1,057 open access journals. Moving forward, NSTL will continue to strengthen digital preservation mechanisms in line with international standards, emphasizing the expansion of high-quality open access resource preservation within China.

Disaster planning for digital collections has unique challenges. This preliminary research begins to examine how institutional members of the Academic Preservation Trust (APTrust) view the consortium in the disaster management landscape for their digital collections. The researchers conducted interviews with two staff members from three different APTrust member institutions. They asked about the institution’s own disaster management strategies for digital collections as well as how they wanted to do joint disaster planning with the consortium.

In the digital era, archives find themselves in an uneasy position, balancing the protection of sensitive data with the need to enable essential research using such data. The Digital Reading Room suggested in this paper uses the existing archival reading room to enable research on Restricted Access Datasets, in line with the Five Safes Framework and EU data legislation. Thus, we ensure that all safeguards are in place to fulfill the archive’s task of preserving data while making it accessible for the public benefit.