In April 2026, the APTrust Governing Board approved a new three-year strategic plan to build reliability and trust for sustainable growth.

Mission

The Academic Preservation Trust preserves and secures diverse digital scholarly and cultural content for member institutions, enabling sustainable management and long-term access through collaborative and trusted, community-built infrastructure.

Vision

The Academic Preservation Trust envisions a future where our expert stewardship preserves petabytes of scholarly and digital cultural content, forming a trusted network of cultural and heritage materials that safeguards collective memory and supports knowledge creation for society.

Values

APTrust is a member of the Digital Preservation Services Collaborative, which published a declaration of shared values in 2023. APTrust affirms its commitment to these values and seeks to demonstrate that commitment. See the full strategic plan for details on how APTrust manifests these values. Key values for APTrust are:

• Working together on the shared challenge of digital preservation strengthens our community and impact.
• Openness and transparency build trust and accountability, enabling verification and collaborative progress.
• Inclusiveness empowers organizations of all sizes to participate and preserve our collective digital heritage.

Goals and Objectives

Goal 1

Enhance APTrust’s technology infrastructure and tools to significantly improve the member experience, data access, and operational efficiency, aligned with our mission.

• Objective 1.1: Enable members to efficiently discover, access, and understand their preserved content through modern search and reporting capabilities that support diverse institutional workflows.
• Objective 1.2: Establish automated, reliable infrastructure operations that reduce manual intervention, accelerate service delivery, and improve overall system performance.
• Objective 1.3: Implement transparent service management practices that clearly communicate operational status, maintenance activities, and support pathways to members.

Goal 2

Enable APTrust members to customize and optimize the storage and location of their preserved content to better align with their individual risk-mitigation strategies and to enhance data management flexibility.

• Objective 2.1: Provide members with flexible control over where and how their content is stored, enabling dynamic optimization of their preservation strategies without service disruption.
• Objective 2.2: Diversify APTrust’s storage infrastructure to reduce single-vendor dependency and enhance organizational resilience.

Goal 3

Strengthen APTrust’s comprehensive security and resilience capabilities to enable the collaborative, accountable, and empowered acceptance and management of sensitive digital content deposits, while enhancing preparedness through disaster planning, response, and risk management.

• Objective 3.1: Strengthen APTrust’s security posture to better support sensitive academic content through assessment against and progress toward industry standards for research data management.
• Objective 3.2: Build organizational resilience through comprehensive risk management and disaster preparedness frameworks that protect member content and ensure service continuity.
• Objective 3.3: Streamline and secure member and staff access through modern identity management approaches that balance usability with institutional security requirements.

Goal 4

Ensure the long-term financial viability and sustainability of APTrust through transparent, accountable, and inclusive fiduciary management that balances diverse revenue streams, strengthens member engagement, and safeguards reserve funding to support the mission.

• Objective 4.1: Demonstrate transparent stewardship by maintaining publicly accessible governance documentation, financial planning tools, and contingency frameworks that build member confidence.
• Objective 4.2: Diversify APTrust’s revenue model and membership base to reduce dependency on any single funding source and expand the preservation community.
• Objective 4.3: Advance organizational accountability by providing clear visibility into the financial and environmental costs of digital preservation services.

Goal 5

Strengthen APTrust’s leadership in the digital preservation community through strategic knowledge sharing, collaborative advocacy, and expanded support for preservation readiness initiatives.

• Objective 5.1: Share APTrust’s cloud preservation expertise with the broader digital preservation community through sustained engagement initiatives that address critical operational challenges in cloud-based preservation infrastructure.
• Objective 5.2: Build collaborative capacity for preservation advocacy by partnering with adjacent digital preservation organizations to develop actionable resources and unified community messaging.
• Objective 5.3: Enhance digital preservation readiness across the academic community through strategic partnerships that lower barriers to preservation adoption and strengthen institutional capabilities.