AB&DR Committee Report

1. PRIA July 14, 2005 Honolulu, HI AB&DR Committee Report

2. Who Else Is Thinking About How To Preserve Electronic Records? • AIIM C-10 - Digital Image Quality and Preservation Study Group • ANSI/ARMA-16-200X - Conversion and Migrations Criteria in Records Keeping Systems • IS&T - Society for Imaging Science & Technology Archiving Conference

3. Who Else Cont’d • NAGARA - Association of State Archivist • NARA - National Archives & Records Administration

4. Where Are We Now? • We’ve attended industry meetings and conferences on electronic preservation. • We’ve polled Recorders about preservation requirements at their state archives. • We’ve issued a progress report for PRIA membership review & comment. http://www.pria.us/archivalcomm.htm

5. Report Summary • Optical media - Not intended for “archiving” permanent records. • Microfilm - Good preservation qualities. Simple and reliable. Timely data recovery could be an issue. • Magnetic - Content Management technology has potential. • Layers of Insurance

6. Virginia Circuit Court Records Preservation Program • 1990 - Library of Virginia began a program to preserve pre-1914 chancery records. • LVA receives $1.50 fee from recording land transactions & judgements. • 50% granted to local clerk’s offices for microfilming & indexing services. • May/June 2003 - Began scanning 18th & 19th century documents to improve their legibility on microfilm.

7. Virginia Circuit Court Records Preservation Program • 2004? - Began a parallel program to preserve these digitized records. • EMC’s Centera CAS System • Addresses the storage of “fixed content” records • On-line active archive of non-changing data. • LVA uses “Self Healing” RAID • Mirrored RAID devices that talk to each other. • Data continually tested at the bit level. • A 27 character key is constructed for each file that uniquely I.D.s it as the original with original content.

8. Content Addressable Storage Providers • EMC - Centera - April 2002 • Pricey - $100K - $200K • Proprietary hardware & software interface. • Archivias - ArC - April 2004 • Claim to be 1/2 Centera’s cost • Open CAS interface • StorageTek - IntelliStore - June 2005 • $75,000 for a 4TB “starter” System • Uses SHA256 hash algorithm rather than “flawed” MD5 used by Centera.

9. Library of VA • Policy on optical media • Optical disks are accepted for security storage only and there is a fee for storing nonpermanent material. Due to the various formats, hardware and software variations, and the continuous changes occurring in the technology, it would be impossible for LVA to maintain the disks permanently. LVA will maintain any disks it generates in the course of its own scanning projects or when doing scanning for another office as part of the commitment to this technology. However, any other public entity sending disks for security storage to LVA is responsible for maintaining this information (meaning updating, recopying if necessary, maintaining the software and hardware to read it, etc.) LVA will only provide proper environmental storage for this information when requested.

10. PRIA July 14, 2005 Honolulu, HI Washington State Digital Archives

11. Washington State Digital Archives • Opened October 1, 2004 • Goals • Preserve electronic records of historical/legal significance • Ensure usability of data into the future • Provide on-line access to most requested document types

12. Washington State Digital Archives • Targeted document types • local government archival (permanent) documents • land records • marriage records • maps • legislative history (ordinances, council minutes) • court records

13. Washington State Digital Archives • Targeted document types (cont.) • state legislative history • e-mails of elected officials/directors • web shots of state government web pages • state-wide election records • top 100 historical documents

14. Washington State Digital Archives • Archival records must be: • secure • accessible in the future • unaltered - archives must be able to certify data content is unaltered

15. Washington State Digital Archives • How does it work • Archives signs interagency agreement with agency transmitting data • Data transmitted via FTP • SSH encryption

16. Washington State Digital Archives • How does it work (cont.) • Secure authenticated transmission • Using Techtia, archives issues a digital certificate for each site. • Techtia captures computer information to ensure transmission coming from trusted site

17. Washington State Digital Archives • How does it work (cont.) • documents “ingested” into archives using Microsoft Biztalk software • One copy of record is XML wrapped & sent to deep storage • XML is self-encapsulated, self-describing, each record has it’s own entry • platform neutral, allows reconstruction of record • One copy kept in archives database • “Original” record (as transmitted) stored on tape off-line

18. Washington State Digital Archives • How does it work (cont..) • all three versions backed-up • separate web-friendly file kept on media server • scanned (.tiff) documents converted to Djvu for web arraying • watermarked “unofficial record”

19. Washington State Digital Archives • Refreshing data • Plan to duplicate all data in four years with new hardware purchase • Recommending duplicating data at least every six to eight years

20. Washington State Digital Archives • Microfilm recommendation • Recommendation to continue microfilming for 4 - 5 years until digital archives technology is proven and stable

21. Washington State Digital Archives • Where are they? • Governor Locke’s electronic records • Essential records (birth, death, marriage) from some counties • Variety of historical records (naturalization, census, top 5 historical documents) • Negotiating interlocal agreements with several local government agencies • www.digitalarchives.wa.gov

22. What’s NARA Doing? • Issued RFP for development of digital archive plan • Vendor selection expected August/September • Proposed two-year development of digital work-flow • Estimated six year project