Maintaining Repositories, Databases, and Digital Collections in Memory Institutions: An Integrative Review

Abstract

ABSTRACT Database maintenance and migration are critical but under‐supported activities in libraries, archives, museums (LAMs), and other scholarly spaces. Existing guidelines for digital curation rarely account for the maintenance needed to keep digital curation infrastructures functioning over time. Though many case studies have been published describing individual instances of migration, there has been little generalizable research done in this area. Thus, it is challenging to understand overall trends or best practices in this space. We bridge this gap by conducting an integrative literature review of papers describing database migrations and maintenance in LAMs and other scholarly contexts. By qualitatively coding 75 articles from 58 publication venues, we identify common motivations for database migrations and maintenance actions. We find that databases are migrated to support changing user needs as well as to ward off technological obsolescence; we also find that common challenges include schema crosswalking and a need for data cleaning. Practitioners describe community collaboration as key in surmounting these challenges. Through this integrative review, we build a base for further best practices development and identify a need to better model database curation as part of the digital curation lifecycle.

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