Archiving of geodata historically focused on methods of keeping digital geodata alive “almost forever”. Project Ellipse is a joint effort by the Swiss Federal Archives (SFA) and the Federal Office of Topography (swisstopo) running from 2011 to 2016. Its aim is to find a common solution for the archiving of geodata in order to implement the applicable legislation. Ellipse follows the entire archiving process chain: from the inventory and appraisal of geodata, to its submission to the digital archives and finally to the users, who expect geodata in a form that is authentic and accessible in a future technological environment.
Archiving of geodata is a complex task that demands intensive cooperation among all stakeholders. Despite our efforts, not all questions have been solved successfully. In this paper, we will report our findings and solutions as well as the obstacles we encountered during the course of Project Ellipse.

Applying digital preservation actions to research data is a practical step in carrying out research data management to its fullest extent and helps ensure this data remains usable in the future. This paper considers how repositories holding research data can link to an external third party tool, Archivematica, in order to carry out preservation actions as part of the data deposit workflow into the repository. We present experience from local use of Archivematica at the Universities of York and Hull in the Jisc Research Data Spring project “Filling the Digital Preservation Gap” as well as Archivematica as a shared service by Arkivum. A main focus across these use cases is a practical approach – parsimonious preservation – by using the Archivematica tools as they exist now whilst building a foundation for more comprehensive preservation strategies in the future. A key area of ongoing investigation covered by this presentation is dealing the with long tail of research data file formats, in particular how to best manage formats that are not immediately supported and need to be added to file registries such as PRONOM.