The University of Otago Library Te Pātaka Mātauraka o Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka, needed to replace its digital asset management system which failed to deliver on both digital preservation and collection access goals. The University initiated a project prioritising ‘preservation for access’ to migrate approximately 18,000 digital collection items, integrate with existing collection management systems and establish digital preservation and discovery workflows.

Despite several obstacles, collaboration between the Hocken Collections, the Library, and Information Technology Services improved digital preservation understanding for the organisation and helped ensure access to digital collection items in perpetuity.

This paper explores the development of a dedicated Digital Preservation Department at the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA) within the broader context of the institution’s ambitious digital transformation. Framed through Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) theory, the research examines how interdisciplinary collaboration, reciprocal knowledge exchange, and organisational memory contribute to adaptive change. Through a reflexive, practice-led methodology grounded in the perspectives of staff across operational, strategic, and executive levels, the paper highlights the evolving ecology of digital preservation at the NFSA. It offers a critical, situated account of the challenges, structural shifts, and emerging strategies shaping digital preservation in a national audiovisual archive and advocates for an adaptive, systems-oriented approach to managing complex digital heritage.

Institutional repositories (IRs) house a significant record of unique academic works. Preserving these materials is vital to ensure ongoing access and usability, however there are several obstacles for preservation in the IR context. This paper outlines how the preservation puzzle is being approached by Scholaris, a new Canadian shared IR service that aims to support the open discovery, management, sharing, and preservation of Canadian scholarship. The service is being developed through an Early Adopter Program coordinated by Scholars Portal at the University of Toronto Libraries and expert groups facilitated by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries. One such group is the Scholaris Digital Preservation Expert Group, which is lending support to create the digital preservation offering for the service. Beginning with an overview of digital preservation in the IR context and the Canadian landscape that led to the formation of Scholaris, the authors outline the goals and ongoing work of the expert group and reflect on challenges and lessons learned so far.