The digital repository: multifunctional portal to government information
The National Archives in The Netherlands is responsible for ensuring the long-term preservation of paper records and digital records. Increasingly, the Government is working with digital records and the National Archives has to address several challenges. Currently, the National Archives stores 7 terabytes of digital records, in particular text records, websites and databases, whereas 17 terabytes are ready for transfer from central government.
Digital records pose several complex issues that must be considered. The fragility of the media is one of the problems; however the real issue is to ensure that digital objects remain available, usable, authentic, and reliable over time. The fast changing IT industry has strong impact on the obsolescence of system hardware and software. Strategies can be employed to preserve the bits and bytes of a record but the bit stream is meaningless without interpretation. In fact, digital records depend on technological environment.
The Trusted Digital Repository was designed and developed for archival institutions and record creators in the Netherlands. It aims to ensure digital longevity access to digital records, give access to the material via the internet to a wide audience, and enable on-line transfer of records from record creators to the Archives. The conceptual overview of the digital repository consists of three layers: access, application, and storage. The access layer regards to the applications to which and in which users access information. Each organization has its own web interface. The application layer is the actual digital repository, while the storage layer refers to the environment in which data was brought. Both storage and application layers are on the same physical location. This will bring a number of advantages in terms of cost, security, volume of data transferred, errors and disturbances or network interface.
Prior to the development of the digital repository, strategic choices were made. The project was first confined to a small scale repository within the premises of the National Archives (NA). Technical staff from the NA was responsible for the management of the system. This proved to be an advantage for security reasons, enabled control over the project, and offered flexibility.
The Digital Repository adopted the OAIS Reference Model (Open Archival Information System), and EAD standard for metadata. It makes it possible to ingest, maintain, preserve, access and render digital records in their authentic form. The preservation system sits outside the repository. Transfer or Pre-Ingestion includes different phases. First, agencies are registered and a general agreement is established, and then digital materials are received. Ingestion consists of registration of acquired materials as being received, automatic quarantine of computer files, technical verification, contents verification, and consolidation. Files and metadata are stored, although metadata is kept in a specific database. Access is intrinsically related to users’ needs and experience that influence the design and architecture of the repository. The architecture complies with accepted open standards and is service-oriented. Users are encouraged to use and provide content.
In summary, aware of the need to put in practice a strategy and a tool to ensure the long-term preservation of its digital legacy, The National Archives of the Netherlands developed and implemented a digital repository that works as a multifunctional portal to government information.
For more information on the project, please visit http://www.digitaleduurzaamheid.nl/index.cfm?paginakeuze=286&lang=en
Daniel Oliveira
