This special issue reports on four case studies of digital archiving of university educational and research resources. The general introduction provides an overview of the university's educational and research resources, including an overview, issues, and historical evolution, and outlines four case studies.

The University of Tokyo has been implementing the 'University of Tokyo Digital Archives Project' since the 2017 academic year. This involves digitizing a diverse range of academic assets held by the university and making them widely available both domestically and internationally, to promote their utilization. This paper describes the current state and examples of the use of the University of Tokyo's educational and research resource archives through the project, as well as the challenges and prospects for the future.

Kansai University established the Open Research Center for Asian Studies (KU-ORCAS) in 2017, and Several digital archives are available at KU-ORCAS. This paper introduces the background that led to the launch of this project and the activities of the Open Research Center for Asian Studies, and provides an overview of the archive's contents. It also introduces other digital archives of Kansai University, presents the current problems of the university as a whole, and considers the challenges for the university to build and maintain a digital archive as a research resource.

We are constructing new digital archives ToUDA (Tohoku University Digital Archives) which will achieve integrated use of cultural-academic resources in Tohoku University and help exploring new values. It is going to be released this spring with contents of the University Library and the University Archives. We will investigate, salvage various contents among the departments of University and make them accessible.

This article introduces the activities of the Research Resources Archive, Kyoto University, based on the “Kenichi Fukui papers and records, 1936–1988, bulk 1940–1982” published in 2023. Subsequently, it considers what is needed for the archives to contribute to education and research at universities through a self-assessment of the promotion of archival materials’ usage. The cooperation between the Kyoto University Research Information Repository (KURENAI) and Japan Search, which was carried out as usage promotion, improves the discoverability of materials. In addition, educating archival users is necessary to support education and research. A study on “Archival Literacy” by Elizabeth Yakel et al. that summarizes the knowledge, skills, and abilities required for archival users is presented as a reference case.

In 2023, the Museum Law was significantly revised. Digital archives have also been added to the museum's operations. Digital archives are expected to trigger innovation in museum sustainability. As society, economy, and financial resources shrink, the collections and information held by museums continue to grow. In the future, museums may also be forced to "triage." In order to make public collections sustainable, we need to overcome this absolute contradiction. It is necessary for museums to ensure sustainability by increasing the number of stakeholders, in other words, those who understand and support the museum.