Stillkeep

Stillkeep is a term used in digital preservation and information management to describe an approach or system dedicated to maintaining digital records in a stable, unalterable state over long periods. The goal of stillkeep is to ensure that archived data remains readable and authentic as technology and formats evolve, enabling reliable audits and legal compliance.

Conceptually, stillkeep combines immutable storage, verifiable metadata, and systematic retention policies. Core features often cited include write-once-read-many (WORM) behavior, cryptographic signing of snapshots, end-to-end encryption, versioned backups, and automated integrity checks using checksums. In practice, stillkeep implementations may use content-addressable storage, strong retention schedules, multi-region replication, and tamper-evident logging to deter and detect unauthorized changes.

Usage contexts include national archives, libraries, financial institutions, healthcare, research institutions, and enterprises with strict compliance requirements. Challenges include the cost of long-term preservation, data format obsolescence, and the need for robust key management and governance. Critics argue that without universal standards and adequate metadata, long-term readability can still degrade.

Origins and status: there is no single universally adopted specification for stillkeep; rather, it appears in discussions as a guiding principle for architectural design and in some open-source tools that implement related capabilities. As a field, stillkeep continues to intersect with digital preservation, information governance, and archival science.

Related concepts include immutable storage, WORM, content-addressable storage, cryptographic integrity verification, and automated verification pipelines.