An Introduction to Tessella and The Safety Deposit Box Platform

Mark Evans

Digital Archiving Practice Manager

• What we do

• Information technology & consulting services for leaders in R&D, science, engineering and archiving

• Archiving is one of our two major technology focus areas

• Flexible & end to end support

• Key facts

• Established in 1980

• ~200 S/W Engineers and Consultants

• 60% of staff hold PhDs

• What makes us different

• Archiving and Preservation experts

• 10 years of practical experience

• Delivered real preservation solutions

• Well qualified S/W engineers & consultants

• Effective partnering at all levels

- Part of a consortia

- Large systems integrators

- Acting as a prime

- Research colaboratives

Tessella Overview

• Dedicated archive practices in

• Abingdon UK

• Washington DC

Tessella Locations

CompleteCompleteArchivingArchivingSolutionSolution

Long TermLong TermSupportSupport

ConsultancyConsultancy

ResearchResearch

SDB Technology: SDB Technology: Archive & Active Archive & Active PreservationPreservation

CustomizationCustomization& Integration& Integration

Archiving Services

Developed online file format registry with UK National Archives, used to dictate preservation strategies.

Open source file identification tool using digital “fingerprint” to identify file formats, developed with UK National Archives.

Open source x86 emulator build for KB (Royal Dutch Library) and Nationaal Archief (Dutch Archive).

Genuine Innovation in Archiving

Digital Archive platform that provides “Active Preservation” Capabilities

SDB – Safety Deposit Box

150 man year EU funded research into preservation strategies with 15 leading organisations.

Digital Preservation Research

Keeping Emulation Environments Portable: - EU funded research for the development of an Emulation Access Platform

DataNet program – Development of a national infrastructure to suport the long term preservation and access of scientific data

Example Digital Archiving Projects

• National / Regional implementations

• 8 instances of SDB

• NARA ERA program

• Subcontractor to Lockheed Martin

• Life sciences

• Archiving of digitally signed Electronic Lab Notebooks (ELN)

• Global Digital Archive

• Consultancy

• Needs assessment for UK houses of Parliament

• Education seminar to agencies in Canada

Based on the OAIS reference model

Evolving technology since 2003

In use at leadinginstitutions

OAIS

Archival Storage

Administration

Preservation Planning

Data Management

Producer C onsum erIngest Access

Includes “Active Preservation” framework(safeguard against technology obsolescence)

Safety Deposit Box

Safety Deposit Box

The British Library UK National Archives

Dutch National Archives

Malaysian Archives

Swiss Federal Archives

Wellcome Trust Library

Rotterdam Regional Archives

Safety Deposit Box – Deployed Locations

• SDB can be offered in 3 primary configurations

Web service API

Standalone Archive

Black-box Archive

Active PreservationPlug-in

Customworkflows3rd party

applications

Producer

Producer

Producer

Accessionbuilder

Accessionauto-loader

Custom / 3rd party access

SDB search & browse

3rd party content storage

Storage adapter

C onsum er

C onsum er

C onsum er

Safety Deposit Box - Offerings

• Create an SDB SIP from received content

• Receive SIP (files + metadata) by:• File copying

• ftp

• SOAP

• Perform SIP Checks:• Consistency checks

• Fixity check

• Virus check

• Characterization

• Ingest Delete requests

• Ingest Edit requests

Ingest toolkit

Metadata Store

• Represents the AIP (SDB supports a logical AIP approach)

• Based of the Planets core data model

• Structure of records

• Association of files to records

• Technical metadata

• Descriptive metadata

• Full audit trail

• Significant properties

• Configurable metadata schema

• Any registered schema , e.g. MARC, PREMIS etc

• Automated integrity checking

Passive Preservation

Three main components

• Characterization

• What do I have in my archive?

• Preservation planning

• What am I going to do to guard

against obselescence?

• Preservation Processing (Migration)

• Select an approved pathway

• Execute

• Validate

• Re-ingest and associate to the original

Active Preservation

• Technical registry is the cornerstone of the active preservation framework

• Contains Factual information

• Formats

• Software

• Hardware

• Tools

• Contains Policy Information:

• Risks / obsolescence

• Significant properties

• Tool usage

• Migration pathways

Active Preservation

• Characterize files: - Use a framework approach

• Basic: file size, last modified date

• Format Identification (DROID)

• Format Validation (JHove)

• Property extraction (Jhove plus others)

• Embedded object extraction:

• Iterative characterisation

• Record Components:

• Discover

• Measure invariant properties of the components

Characterization

SDB uses a risk based approach

• Determine risk of formats

• With properties (e.g. LOC sustainability factors)

• Determine files at risk

• Determine records at risk:

• Build list of things to migrate

• Look up best migration pathway:

• Allow manual approval

Preservation Planning

• Perform approved pathway

• Complex mappings allowed

• Partial migrations allowed

• Validation:

• Re-measure invariant properties

• Tool specific

• Ingest migrated files + metadata

Preservation Action - Migration

Thank you for your attention

Mark Evans

Mark.evans@tessella.com

(1) 240 403 7504

http://www.tessella.com

Questions