Future Proof – Protecting our digital future

We’re often asked how State Records NSW does digital preservation. Really the defining feature of our approach is its flexibility: we apply a project management-based methodology (the Digital Archives Migration Methodology) to all transfers of digital State archives. This means that we assess, define and document appropriate preservation strategies for each individual transfer (using project […]

Right now, State Records’ Digital Archives team is moving from project to normal operations mode. As part of this transition we are publishing our methodology and procedures, providing public access to digital archives from the pilot projects that are open to public access, and inviting NSW agencies to start contacting us to initiate migration projects. […]

One of the challenges that we (State Records NSW’s digital archives team) have been tackling is how we will approach the migration of database-backed business systems to the digital archives. There are a number of difficulties in preserving databases: many database management systems (particularly those used in government) are proprietary and require licenses to use, so […]

When State Records started building a whole of government digital archive for New South Wales, we committed to publishing new software developed for the project as free and open source software. We rely heavily on software and web services shared freely by members of the digital preservation community, such as the PRONOM technical registry from the National Archives (UK) and Xena from the National […]

The Digital Archives project was profiled in an article published yesterday on IT News: http://www.itnews.com.au/News/294188,nsw-govt-to-open-source-digital-archives-software.aspx. It’s a great piece, giving extensive coverage to digital preservation issues, the scope of the Digital Archives project, the benefits of an ‘open source’ approach,  metadata, search, and (one of our bugbears) making it clear that there is a difference […]

Executive Summary This research paper discusses three problems with using the term transfer to describe the processes that precede ingest into the digital archives and recommends instead the adoption of a project-based, system migration approach.

Image: Niles E. Hewlett Enterprise architects and records managers have much to gain by working together. Records managers can contribute their expert knowledge of their organisation’s ‘business’ and its ‘data’ assets. By working with enterprise architects, records managers can improve the visibility of their programs, receive assistance in strategic tasks such as the development of business cases, and, most […]

Last week I attended THATCamp Melbourne, a humanities and technology ‘un-conference’, as well as its lead-up event, the Great PROV Data Challenge. These events were attended by a diverse group that included humanities scholars, archivists, librarians, e-research support staff, and cultural hackers. A key theme that emerged at THATCamp was the importance of the data […]

State Records is working to unlock the information contained within retention and disposal authorities by adopting XML as the preferred format for drafting and publication. Authority Editor is an open source application for drafting and transforming authorities in XML. This application is now freely available for download online.

Future proofers Cassie, Kate and Richard recently attended the 2010 Australian Society of Archivists conference which had the theme ‘Future Proof: Resilient Archives 2020 and Beyond’ (no relation!). Melbourne’s mixed weather didn’t dampen a great program, highlights of which follow…