managing digital records in the long-term – the naa experience james doig digital preservation
TRANSCRIPT
Managing Digital Records in the Long-Term – the NAA
ExperienceJames Doig
Digital Preservation
2
Overview
• The Role of the National Archives
• Digital Preservation
• Case Studies
• Directions
3
Role of the National Archives
• The Archives Act (1983)
– Disposal– Transfer– Preservation– Access
DISPOSAL / RECORDKEEPING
• Recordkeeping
• Records Disposal Authorities
• Standards
Record Authorities
• Legal Instrument
– Short-term Temporary– Long-term Temporary– Retain as National Archives (RNA)– Destructions: metadata is RNA
Transfer• Emergency Transfers
- Royal Commissions- Closing Agencies
• Personal Records- Share folders / Email- Election 2007
• Agency Transfers- Sentencing
Transfer Requirements• Commonwealth Record Series (CRS) system:
- archival descriptive standard for capturing provenance and original order
- by serialising records we preserve the recordkeeping structure in which records were kept
- Agency Registration, Series Form, Item List: these are loaded to RecordSearch
- Manifest provides file-level metadata: used in the digital preservation process
Preservation & Access
• Preserve significant Commonwealth records for current and future generations
• Make available to the public Commonwealth records more than 30 years old, with certain exemptions
Digital Preservation Objectives
• Preserve any type of digital record
• Created using any type of application
• On any computing platform
• Delivered on any digital media
• From any agency and any donor
• Provide discovery and access
• For current and future generations
9
Digital Archive
10
The NAA “Normalisation” Approach
• Translate into open, fully specified formats- essential characteristics- audit trail of the preservation
process
• Keep the original
• Store both with metadata
Some Preservation Formats
• ODF - Open Document Format
• XML – Extensible Markup Language
• PNG – Portable Network Graphics
• FLAC – Free Lossless Audio Codec
12
Case Study 1
• Australian Institute of Criminology
• A13197: Speeches Made by Dr Adam Graycar, Director of the Australian Institute of Criminology
• CD-R received in November 2005: 400 files comprising doc, ppt, pdf
13
File Structure
Transfer Forms: Item List
RecordSearch
Manifest
17
Original file
18
Preserved file
Xena Viewer
Case Study 2
• Inquiry into certain Australian companies in relation to the UN Oil-for-Food Programme
• Multiple series
• CDs received in December 2006
• Over 400,000 files, 23 gig – mostly TIFF, some pdf, xls and other formats
Case Study 2
• The images comprise over 100,000 scanned paper documents
• PM&C gets all the paper records and the actual recordkeeping software for access purposes
• The Archives asks for:
Export of files
Letters patent
Recordkeeping metadata
Transfer Forms: Item List
RecordSearch
Manifest
Preserved Letters Patent
Xena uses
• Open source – freely available from sourceforge • University of Sydney – D-Space Repository
• City of Perth – integrated into TRIM- customised Xena metadata wrapper
32
Conclusion• Transfer process
- specify requirements for different systems- recordkeeping metadata
• Formats- design, tech drawing (CAD)- geospatial data- video- databases