National Archives of Australia

Digital Preservation

Michael Carden Australian Capital Territory

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4 What does the National Archives keep? Paper files. Photographs. Architectural drawings. Sound recordings. Film and video. Textiles.

5 A wide variety of records

6 A wide variety of records

7 A wide variety of records

8 Digital Records

9 Why digital preservation?

Hardware / media obsolescence. Operating system obsolescence. Software application obsolescence.

10 Hardware

11 Media

12 Software

13 What are we preserving?

14 What are we preserving?

15 What are we preserving?

16 What are we preserving?

17 Computer Museum

18 Emulation

19 National Archives method

Normalise to selected open formats. Store original and normalised versions with metadata.

20 Preservation using Xena

Original

Data

Open Format

21 Open formats

Based on open standards. Community developed. Multiple implementations. No licensing constraints.

22 Open format examples

ODF - OpenDocument Format. XML – eXtensible Markup Language. HTML – Hypertext Markup Language. PNG – Portable Network Graphics. FLAC – Free Lossless Audio Codec.

23 Xena software

Determines file formats. Converts to open formats. Custom metadata wrappers. Custom output file namers.

24 Open source software

Transparency. Authenticity. Collaboration. Lower the bar for entry.

25 Free downloads http://xena.sourceforge.net http://dpr.sourceforge.net

26 Xena integration

DSpace at Sydney University. TRIM at the City of Perth. Alfresco Content Manager. Digital Preservation Recorder.

27 Our Software

28 Our Software

29 Our Software

30 Our Software

31 Three-step process

Digital Preservation Recorder Software Antivirus Xena Checker

! Hardware

Data Quarantine Preservation Digital Archive

32 Epilogue

“Digital information lasts forever...”

33 Epilogue

“Digital information lasts forever... or five years, whichever comes first.”

-- Jeff Rothenberg. Scientific American, January 1995.

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