Preservation strategies ARK2200 Digital recordkeeping and preservation II 2017 Thomas Sødring thomas.sodring@hioa.no P48-R407 67238287

Preservation strategies From an archives perspective, the main preservation strategies are technology preservation printing on paper emulation encapsulation virtual machine migration XML and the use of standard formats

Technology preservation Preserve the technology required to access original documents as long as access to the documents is required Both costly and technologically complex The amount of technical knowledge required would be massive Support for both software and hardware expires Where do you find support for DOS 1.0, Win 3.1, Win 95, TRS-DOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_operating_systems

Technology preservation Preserve the technology required to access original documents as long as access to the documents is required When the market for a product ends it manufacturers stop making components Standardisation can offset this Difficult to obtain spare parts for the hardware How long will we be able to buy spare parts for a Nokia 5110 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiQ6V12F7xY&feature=related

Technology preservation Sony J30 Multiformat Analog And Digital Betamax Player (New price) about NOK 80 000,- Sony Super Betamax VTR Model SL-HF400 (Used price) about NOK 450,- Migration from Betamax to a more modern standard* is really the only way to preserve something if we wish to avoid technological obsolescence The move to cloud will likely see the end of DVD players as well *https://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/betamaxhd.html

Technology preservation Fra 1951. Can still be bought on finn.no

Technology preservation A BIOS does not have an unlimited lifetime It may also be difficult to get a harddisk to spin again in the future

Technology preservation The number of machines that are able to read files on older media decreases over time The skills needed to use the hardware and software slowly die out over time and eventually disappear Windows 3.1 IBM PC DOS 2.1 The skills required to understand how legacy software is coded gradually disappears ALGOL, COBOL, Fortran

Windows 95 (support from) : 24/8/1995 - 31/12/2001 Windows 2000 Server (support from): 31/3/2000 – 30/6/2005 extended to (13/7/2010)

What about updates The previous examples were only operating systems Microsoft has something known as 'patch Tuesday' The second Tuesday of each month Microsoft releases an large bundle of security updates In addition to important updates Computers will also have various software products provided by various vendors Several recordkeeping vendors roll out updates quarterly Recordkeeping is becoming more distributed Systems using central log-on services

Technology preservation Technology preservation is currently not a sustainable solution But 3D printing, standardisation could help But this is in the future There are too many 'what if' questions We no longer work 'stand alone', we work in a distributed fashion If these arguments are not enough, you could also have problems trying to index all documents that are part of the system

Printing to paper A preservation strategy that previously has been used and still is in use However, the printing of all documents to paper is not a feasible method for long-term preservation documents But better than losing documents Some documents can lose important information when printed on paper Typically when some sort of functional information is included in the document formulas in a spreadsheet

Printing to paper Databases are not designed to be printed out A printed version is only a selective view of the database Think about the relational model Some electronic documents are not printable Text and images can be printed on paper without loss of data e.g. important metadata Printing to paper is often seen as a temporary solution to the long term preservation problem as long as a digital solution is lacking

Emulation Emulation is a method by which one computer can imitate another Hardware emulation gave a new life to Nintendo games even get Nintendo emulators for mobile phones Differentiate between emulation of hardware and software

Emulation From a preservation perspective, emulation could allow documents exist in an 'imitation' of their original environment i.e. operating system and software A document can be presented in its original form The context, structure, etc. are preserved Only works to a certain degree as some context might be in the database Emulate database and documents? In many ways this is achieved in PDF/A anyway There are projects that attempt to create emulators for various document formats

Emulation Windows Emulator (wine) is a program that lets you run Windows programs on the Linux operating system (OS) It emulates parts of the Windows OS You can get emulation programs that emulate the hardware of a mobile phone Useful for iPhone and Android development

Emulation Emulation is both complicated and costly and there is a great potential for errors Reduced if it is based on a ubiquitous technology There is no guarantee that we will be able to recreate a full computing environment for documents on future computers You still have to deal with Software that needs to verify licenses on a server Links to external resources SharePoint links in MS Word file? Ultimately you may have to emulate an entire computing network

Virtualisation Virtualisation is a technique that allows one operating system to run within another It is also an alternative that could address some of the inherent limitations with technology preservation Technology has also evolved and virtualisation is a commonly used technology https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPkEqOoQSu4

Virtualisation Virtualisation allows an operating system (called host) to run on another operating system (called guests) The guest operating system does not (necessarily) know that it is running on a virtual machine This is often done by installing software on a machine that creates an abstraction layer (hypervisor) that allows another OS access the hardware on your computer CPU / memory / storage / network https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPkEqOoQSu4

Virtualisation Traditional Virtualised Application (MS Office) (LibreOffice) Program (MS Office) Program (MS Office) Program (MS Office) Application (MS Office) Operativsystemet ditt (Windows 7) Operativsystemet ditt (Windows 7) Operatingsystem (Windows 7) Operativsystemet ditt (Windows 7) Operatingsystem (Linux) Operatingsystem (Windows 7) Virtual machine Virtual machine Virtuellmaskin Virtuellmaskin Virtuellmaskin Hardware (x86) Hypervisor Hardware (x86) Traditional Virtualised

Virtualisation and preservation As opposed to preserving hardware, with virtualisation we just preserve software (OS and applications)? Especially useful if the software is free Even if we were able to develop a "Universal Virtual Computer" (UVC) that allows your records to live for a long span You still have issues related to licensing and third party dependencies like single sign-on Reduced problem with open source

Migration Migration (including using standard formats) is the best known and most widely used preservation method It is also the most criticised method A simple definition of migration is Migration is the transfer of records/files from one machine/configuration to another application to another

Migration A simple example of this is the migration of a file from Microsoft Word 2007 (.doc) to Word 2013 (.docx) A more complex example is the migration of a file that can only be read correctly on an Apple machine to one that can be read correctly on a Windows machine Criticisms against migration is that the results are often unpredictable Especially if part of an automated process Often due to a lack of testing

Migration When new versions of software come to market, it is common to carry out an update of documents to the latest version of the software Sometimes this can lead to a loss of information content, context, structure, appearance The new software may not be able to read the file in the same way as the old software With a consequence that content and/or functionality can be lost

Migration The results of a migration process can be difficult to predict Before conversion, a lot of work may have to be undertaken in order understand issues relating to both the source and destination (file) formats Migration can have an influence on the authenticity of a document The archive may have to preserve documents without the ability to prove that the documents are authentic Integrity and authenticity must be preserved

Encapsulation Encapsulation does not retain records in their original form, but encapsulates the records with a set instructions on how they should be interpreted We will look at representational information in the OAIS model A formal, detailed description of the file format and what the information means is required XML can be used for this Very much dependent on the complexity of the original software

XML XML stands for Extensible Markup Language A language that can be used to describe information about the structure and meaning of data An open standard, defined by the World Wide Web Consortium and is platform independent Converting records to XML format is a type of migration XML is also considered as the most promising format for preservation and interoperability

Preservation in Norway In Norway preservation standards set by the National Archive and enshrined in law In many ways Norways uses a combination of migration, XML and encapsulation Migration is the chosen technique Records are converted to XML Records are described in a way that it could be encapsulation Preservation has to be cost-effective, robust and sustainable over time