National Archives of Australia Digital Preservation Michael Carden Australian Capital Territory 2 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 <metadata> Original <metadata> Data <metadata> Open Format <metadata> 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. 34.