National Archives of Australia, WA branch, Fri 28 July 2023
Digitisation I: Decision space
Presenter: Debra Paisley, WA Digitisation Centre
- Developing a digitisation plan
- Should you digitise – digitisation evaluation tool prepped by Debra in Excel Digitisation Evaluation template.xlsx (based on USyd one)
- UWA on Recollect for their DAM – for the story of the journey to Recollect refer to WAUL DAM seminar notes OCT-2022
- Take down policy in place, for sensitive items – trigger warnings? i.e. stuff that hasn’t aged well or might be politically incorrect, diversity/race insensitive etc
- DCWA uses FADGI (Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative) guidelines + NAA reference to determine digitisation formats and processes
- Useful to digitise lower value/risk items to test/improve processes and increase confidence in systems in skillset
Digital Preservation I: Planning for digital preservation
Presenter: James Doig, Assistant Director (NAA)
- Digital preservation is not IT backup — does not include intellectual description and context for interpretation and analysis/research etc
- Australian Fed government and agencies have General Records Authority 31 – if you have digitised a copy, then can destroy original, up to about 1980 at present
- 200+ formats in NAA Preservica system, top file format is TIFF; missing a lot of “Office document’ formats in top 20 i.e. missing records born digital — should be in Office formats?? Are these not being supplied as ‘records’ by departments?
- Good use of basic ‘stats’ on collection — i.e. not seeing the numbers they would expect for a digital workforce, when TIFF is the top format
- File format proliferation — why 200+ formats under custody — is this advisable? Or pragmatic reality?
- NAA uses Mediaflex system for film + AV storage / catalogue – Preservica system for born digital (NFSA and DAMSmart also use Mediaflex) Rose Holley’s Blog – views and news on digital libraries and archives: Audiovisual achievements – National Archives of Australia (rose-holley.blogspot.com) https://www.tmd.tv/wp-content/uploads/CASE-STUDY_NAA_A4.pdf
- OAIS (Open Archival Information System) model, 1 of 3 models talked about; also used by Piers at Gaia Resources – a conceptual tool for covering all the bases and maintaining control over the records
- Concept of digital knowledgebase about the collection e.g. formats, handling etc — what tool do we use to capture and maintain this? — preservation planning
- Increasingly need to ask if donated material has been encrypted — unencrypt before ingest
- NAA/AARnet emulation as a service for archival software – see James’ later presentation
- Biggest challenge at NAA – organising transfers from organisations/departments
Digital Preservation II – Digital preservation toolkit
Presenter: James Doig, Assistant Director (NAA)
- DROID connects to PRONOM (format database) help with obsolesce identification?
- NAA uses SHA-256 and SHA-512 checksums (MD5 for Mediaflex) — as endorsed by Australian Defence Signals Directorate
- NAA migrating MS Office documents to Libre Office, but less happening because of momentum behind the format — i.e. a de facto standard for office documents, and likely to be accessible in future because of sheer numbers
Digitisation II: Trusting Digitisation
Presenter: Joanna Sassoon
- Digitisation is just another method of ‘copying’ of records
- Record keeping system needs to note relationship between source and copies, so the context is not lost, and the chain of evidence is not lost
- Suggest we can learn much from Police forensic staff who need to maintain evidence that can hold up in court
- Use of ‘targets’ i.e. physical labels included in the digitised image to explain source/context – used in microfilm capture
- DIP – dissemination packages from OAIS model to assist context travelling with object when accessed by users?
Digital Preservation III: Case studies in methods, platforms and integration
Presenters: Piers Higgs, Gaia Resources; Meg Travers, Gaia Resources; James Doig, Assistant Director (NAA)
- Gaia with familiarity with AWS (and Archivematia, ArchivesSpace, ArchivesGateway (GAIA) and ArchivesSearch (GAIA); worked with QLD SRO and PROV
- PREMIS METS XML file to track what happened to file/object throughout its lifecycle
- Bagger to create AIPs
- Storing the AIPs in the cloud and local
- Meg: email as records – EPADD app (use for eDiscovery?)
- James: demo of AARNet’s EaaSI (emulation of as a service infrastructure) – Swinburne person/professor prompted AARNet to develop further? Swinburne Creative Writing G21 project Macromedia Director replay????
Digitisation III: The WA Digitisation Centre
Presenters: Debra Paisley, WA Digitisation Centre; Janet Luk, WA Digitisation Centre
- On-charge rate for externals $190 ph, allied organisations $130 ph
Panel Q&A
Chair: Ros Malone, BCGS
- Format proliferation — 200+ formats sustainable + advisable?
- Trusting cloud storage claims? If no on-prem storage or alternate copies?
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