Digital ArchivesEdward Iglesias

What is an Archive?

• An archives is a place where people go to find information. But rather than gathering information from books as you would in a library, people who do research in archives often gather firsthand facts, data, and evidence from letters, reports, notes, memos, photographs, audio and video recordings, and other primary sources.• http://files.archivists.org/advocacy/AAM/

WhatIsAnArchives.pdf

What is not a Digital Archive

• A specific storage system whether a tier of storage, a cloud-based storage repository, or a specialized storage device.

• A service that provides extensions to an organization's storage for the purposes of offloading (as in tiering) whether onsite, off-site, or at end-of-life as storage expansion

• Any device or practice vendors or IT calls "archiving", "database archive", or "archival storage" - from a "digital archive systems" perspective, these are not "Level 1" systems or services by themselves.

• http://www.ltdprm.org/reference-model/what-is-an-archive

Required Attributes for a "Level 1" Digital Archive

• A digital archive systems has three essential components: the digital records being retained, the organization that administers those records, and the infrastructure that supports the retention, protection, and accessibility of those records over their designated retention periods.

• The infrastructure that supports a digital archive needs to have these preservation-specific functions (the "service-catalog") at minimum:• Digital Auditing (using digital signatures) and verification on a periodic

basis to assure record authenticity, digital integrity, and data protection• Physical and logical Migration capabilities• Infrastructure supporting Access to records, including Search/Discovery

and re-use • Minimal data loss and means to audit, detect, and repair damage,

corruption, or loss over extended periods of time.

Kinds of Digital Archives

• Dark Archive• (n.) In reference to data storage, an archive

that cannot be accessed by any users. Access to the data is either limited to a set few individuals or completely restricted to all. The purpose of a dark archive is to function as a repository for information that can be used as a failsafe during disaster recovery

Kinds of Archives contd.

• light archive• (n.) In reference to data storage, an archive

that can be accessed by many authorized users. Access to the data is open to all the members of the "community" that have a need for the data.

Images

• Digital Image Archives• Examples • CCSU’s Digital Archive• http://content.library.ccsu.edu/• Cornell’s Witchcraft Library• http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/w/witch/

Sound

• Library of Congress National jukebox• http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/

• Internet Archive• http://archive.org/browse.php?collection=etre

e&field=%2Fmetadata%2Fcreator

Data Sets

• Carnegie Mellon Statslib

• http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/

Manuscripts

• Harvard

• http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/7271429?n=3&imagesize=1200&jp2Res=.125&printThumbnails=no

• Oxford

• http://image.ox.ac.uk/

Film Archives

• UCLA’s Animation Archive (Part of larger film archive.)• http://animation.library.ucla.edu/

• Internet Archive• Night of the Living Dead• https://archive.org/details/

night_of_the_living_dead_dvd

Digital Objects

• Thingiverse• http://www.thingiverse.com/

Process

• Cornell’s process• http://www.library.cornell.edu/iris/dpo/docs/E-A

rchive-Ingest-process-draft3.pdf

• Tuft’s Incredibly long document• xhttp://dca.lib.tufts.edu/features/nhprc/reports

/ingest/overview.html

What Can’t be Digitized

• The first story finds coauthor Paul Duguid in an ancient archive, hacking and wheezing from the dust and longing for digitized documents. In walks a medical historian who, to Duguid's utter astonishment and disgust, starts sticking letters under his nose and inhaling deeply. It turns out that when cholera struck in the 1700s, a town's outgoing mail was disinfected with vinegar to prevent spreading the disease. By sniffing for faint traces of vinegar and noting the date and source of the letters, the researcher was able to chart the progress of cholera outbreaks.

• http://www.wholeearth.com/issue/2104/book-review/132/the.social.life.of.information