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

2. Who Else Is Thinking About How To Preserve Electronic Records?
AIIM C-10 - Digital Image Quality and Preservation Study Group
ANSI/ARMA X - 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.

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

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
s 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 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

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