title: Destination: Shared Repository: The National Library of France's Journey to Third-Party Archiving
creators: Louise Fauduet Sébastien Peyrard
abstract: The SPAR repository project started as a way to make preservation easier, cheaper, and more effective for the National Library of France (Bibliothèque nationale de France, BnF). At the time (early 2000s), the BnF used different storage media and technologies across the library, and had no unified responsibilities and processes. When the decision was made to overhaul the infrastructure and the software to have one repository to replace them all, the project designers reflected quite naturally that such an effort could and should benefit other libraries that had similar scalability issues. There were many obstacles to overcome after that generous impulse. First, finding the BnF's niche in the digital preservation landscape, at a time when it was growing and evolving fast — as it still is. Even when focusing on the heritage sector, there are several other repositories or planned systems that have a national vocation, within the archives or higher education communities for instance. Then came the matter of combining the needs of the library itself and the design necessities of third-party archiving to create a repository that would be scalable, trustworthy and open. Last but not least, the BnF is continuously refining the way the repository can best serve its clients. The most accessible function for partners is bit-level preservation, and any extra step toward comprehensive preservation has to be balanced with available resources and tiered prices. As the first clients come in, prices and processes are still in flux, and vulnerable to policy changes.
keywords: digital repository. third-party archiving. cost models lisbon