This week the Digital POWRR project staff has posted a large amount of information describing fifty-seven tools used in digital preservation activities. See http://digitalpowrr.niu.edu/tool-grid/. They include back-end storage providers and ingest/processing ("front end") utilities.
While a relatively small number of general, integrated front end applications like Archivematica and Curator's Workbench are currently available, individuals and institutions pondering a digital preservation initiative can also bring a number of ingest/processing tools together to assemble an ingest workflow suited to their specific needs.
As we found in the considerable amount of time required to review each of these tools and its capabilities, accumulating the knowledge necessary to make informed decisions in this matter can be quite a challenge. Hopefully, our list of available tools can help to shorten the amount of time and effort required.
In the coming year the project collaborators will test and review two back-end solutions, DuraSpace and Meta-Archive, and front-end utilities Archivematica and Curator's Workbench.
