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Digital preservation systems and practices are rooted in research and development efforts from the late 1990s and early 2000s when the cultural heritage sector started to tackle these challenges in isolation. Since then, the commercial sector has sought to solve similar challenges, using different technical strategies such as software defined storage and function-as-a-service. While commercial sector solutions are not necessarily created with long-term preservation in mind, they are well aligned with the digital preservation use case. The cultural heritage sector can benefit from adapting these modern approaches to increase sustainability and leverage technological advancements widely in use across Fortune 500 companies.

Digital preservation is a complex, highly technical activity. Large institutions with many collections in multiple repositories (or repository-like systems) may find it challenging to corral digital collections, preservation masters and metadata into coherent archival information packages for preservation storage. This paper describes the tools and workflows for a bit-level preservation strategy for digital content at the University of Cincinnati Libraries and lessons learned on the way.