Playing it forward: Adopting a 'Total Cost of Stewardship' approach for digital collecting and preservation at the National Library of Ireland

The National Library of Ireland (NLI) has progressively adopted a Total Cost of Stewardship (TCOS) approach to support more holistic and sustainable decision making around the acquisition, preservation, and provision of access to digital collections. Developed by OCLC, TCOS provides a flexible framework and associated Toolkit for assessing current capacity, risk, and long-term resource requirements in relation to Archival and Special Collections. For the NLI’s Digital Collections team, its implementation has been an iterative and collaborative process manifesting in various policies and procedures including but not limited to the NLI Digital Preservation Policy (2023). This paper will explore the NLI’s ongoing journey in adopting and adapting the TCOS framework with a particular emphasis on the work of the Digital Collections team to suit the needs of the organisation and the collections in our care. The initial release of TCOS in 2021 coincided with pilot activity around born-digital archival collections and the establishment of a newly resourced Digital Preservation and Repository Services team. This created an opportunity to experiment with workflows, test assumptions, and adapt the TCOS toolkit to meet real-world organisational needs. Although format-neutral and not specific to digital material, TCOS proved particularly valuable as a shared structure that fostered collaboration between staff who specialised in cataloguing, born-digital archives, and digital preservation. Together, teams adapted TCOS templates to prioritise collections, document risks, and capture critical curatorial and technical decision-making at all stages with a particular emphasis on acquisition and transfer. The process exposed gaps in existing documentation and directly informed the development of new policies, procedures, and guidelines that connect decision making across the collections lifecycle from acquisition and transfer through to access to reuse. As institutional capacity, priorities, and digital maturity continue to evolve, such frameworks can function as “play spaces” for digital preservation work, enabling experimentation, reflection and supporting coordinated stewardship goals across diverse teams. By sharing this experience, the paper aims to contribute to broader conversations about collaboration, the development of roles and teams, and learning-through-doing.