November 5 is World Digital Preservation Day (#WDPD2026) and it coincides with an important milestone for Yukon Archives: the acquisition of a significant collection of Government of Yukon born-digital records. The theme, Save Our Stories (SOS): Our digital heritage in danger, is fitting, as these records faced a preservation risk earlier this year and were successfully protected.  

Yukon Archives, located in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada, is the official repository for the documentary heritage of the Government of Yukon and Yukoners. Following the Canadian archives “total archives” model, it preserves both government and private records. I have been the Digital Archivist here since 2020. I see my role as building our capacity by developing both our technical infrastructure and the skills and knowledge of our staff.  

Our early digital preservation efforts focused primarily on digitization, although we had also begun accepting some born-digital records. Today, Yukon Archives manages approximately 106 TB of records, including 3 TB of born-digital material.  

In November 2025, Yukon held a territorial election that resulted in a change of administration. In the Yukon, when a new political party forms government, the Cabinet and Ministerial records of the previous administration are transferred to Yukon Archives. This process is known as Transition. The transfer is mandated by records schedules and cabinet confidentiality requirements in our Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act.  

For the first time, the majority of records transferred during the 2025 Transition were born-digital. 

We had developed and tested transfer procedures, but they had not been used in a real-world setting until the 2025 Transition. Over several months, we successfully received the Transition records via network transfer into a secure drop-off folder on our digital repository. The repository is hosted on an onsite server that is backed up at a separate location.  

While we have not yet implemented dedicated digital preservation software, we have fixity monitoring in place and are developing preservation actions for at-risk formats like .pst email files. Managing Transition while expanding our digital preservation program kept us busy, and the experience is worthy of a blog post of its own. 

I have plenty to say for #WDPD2026’s theme of Save Our Stories (SOS): Our digital heritage in danger. I could talk about the technological obsolescence of hardware and software, the risk of file corruption over time, the challenges of managing metadata, or the fragility of the intellectual links between digital records. Instead, I’ll share a recent example from our server room that highlights how easily digital heritage can be put at risk, and how emergency response preparation and quick action helped keep our records safe.  

Late in the afternoon in March, 2026, a leak developed in the ceiling over our server. Water began dripping onto the racks. Fortunately, the leak was discovered early, and it remained a steady drip rather than becoming a torrent of water. Even so, no amount of water and electricity is a good mix.  

Our Emergency Response Plan was quickly put into action. Staff installed a tarp over the rack and redirected the water flow into a large bucket. Care was taken not to wrap the tarp too closely, as restricting air flow could have caused the server to overheat. Additional fans were brought in to help keep it cool.  

The following day our IT team safely relocated the server away from the leak. It remained partially tarped while repairs to the leak and the ceiling were completed.

Image: Yukon Archives onsite server before March 2026 (left) and as we completed repairs to the ceiling (right). 

But what if the leak had occurred after hours and we hadn’t caught it so quickly? In that scenario, we would have used our Disaster Recovery Response Plan.  

A foundational principle of digital preservation is keeping copies of records in multiple locations. This is true whether your repository is hosted onsite or in the cloud. After all, the cloud is still physical infrastructure located somewhere. By maintaining backup copies of our records offsite, we can restore and recover the records if our primary repository is damaged or destroyed.  

Redundant storage can sometimes seem like unnecessary duplication and an added expense, but disasters can happen at any time and often without warning. Having reliable backups in place ensures that Yukon Archives can continue to safeguard our Yukon stories, even when the unexpected occurs. 

All the records preserved at Yukon Archives are important, but the 2025 Transition records hold particular significance. They provide primary evidence of government decisions and activity over nearly a decade. By accepting these records, we made a commitment to keeping them safe and accessible to Yukoners and the wider research community.  

I’m happy to say that when our preparedness was tested, our safeguards worked as intended. The experience was a valuable reminder of the importance of keeping our Emergency Response and Disaster Recovery Response plans up to date. Here’s hoping we don’t need to put them to use again anytime soon.  

Author: Elizabeth Walker is the Digital Archivist of the Yukon Archives.