Emergency Hardware Support
UPDATE: As of August 2024, DPOE-N has halted all of its funding opportunities. We are currently fundraising and anticipate reopening applications in February 2025.
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The Digital Preservation Outreach and Education Network (DPOE-N), hosted at Pratt Institute and New York University and generously supported by the Mellon Foundation, is primarily about connecting cultural heritage professionals with digital preservation professional development opportunities. However, climate change has challenged the country and its libraries, archives and museums, leading to risks of losing digital information because of unpredictable weather and more frequent and severe natural disasters. Hurricanes, floods, and wildfires pose particular risks to cultural heritage institutions due to potential damage to buildings as well as from limitations of local infrastructure to rapidly respond to disasters. Recognizing that current needs around digital preservation could be of an emergency nature that extend beyond professional development, we have allocated a modest sum of money ($10K in fiscal year 2023/2024) for emergency hardware support.
DPOE-N looks to provide emergency hardware support to institutions who are stewarding digital materials that are critically endangered stemming from climate change. This could include institutions that need to make secondary or tertiary copies of their digital archives or need to refresh aging storage hardware (older than five years) and are unable to because of budgetary shortfalls stemming from climate change and climate change-related natural disasters.
Eligibility Criteria
- Be located within the United States or its territories.
- Have 501(c)(3) public charity status, or have an organization with 501(c)(3) public charity status serving as a fiscal sponsor.
- Have an archive/collection with an annual operating expense budget roughly between $50,000 and $1 million (exceptions can be made; please contact us to discuss).
- Have a digital archive/collection.
- Be able to provide a recent IRS Form 990 for the organization (provide it directly or have it available in databases such as Guidestar.org).
Please see the Rubric for Institution and Individual Selection (PDF) for details on how funding is prioritized.
Sample Hardware
The Emergency Hardware Support program looks to ensure that financial exigencies to not prevent a small institution from having multiple copies of their digital archives/collections, which is a major factor in preserving digital information. While most large institutions have server rooms with rack-mounted hardware, small institutions without extensive IT personnel often need to rely on consumer products. For institutions such as these, the storage hardware recommended is that which support RAID, which stands for redundant array of independent disks. With RAID 1 for example, if one hard drive fails, the second one will keep the data intact. However, standalone hard drives may make sense for tertiary copies that are stored remotely.
| Image | Description | Cost |
 | Western Digital 12TB RAID External Hard Drive with USB connection | $388.99 |
| Western Digital 16TB RAID External Hard Drive with USB connection | $599.99 |
 | Western Digital 4TB External Hard Drive with USB connection Note: this is not a RAID drive, so would only be appropriate for a disaster recovery copy (e.g., 3rd copy stored offsite). | $89.99 |
This project does not provide funds for cloud storage because physical hardware provides more fungible end dates (e.g., a hard drive should be replaced every 5-7 years), where cloud storage billing ādue datesā are less flexible, and we would not want to see an institution lose information because they could not pay their cloud storage bill in the future.
The maximum purchase cost is $600, and the minimum is $80. If there are reasonable deviations from these minimums and maximums, please contact us to discuss. Only reputable manufacturers of digital hardware storage will be approved.
Purchasing Logistics
If the proposal for Emergency Hardware Support is approved, the hardware will be purchased by Pratt Institute and mailed to the recipient. Note that only institutional mailing addresses may be used (no home addresses). Because of its extensive network of suppliers, Amazon will be used for making purchases and the secondary choice for making purchases is Best Buy.