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| Archiving Websites - Archiving of Dresdner Bank intranet |
| In this article the authoress deals with the more and more important question of archiving intranet content ("webarchiving"). It is based on a thesis which was presented 2003 to the University of Applied Sciences - Fachhochschule Potsdam, Department of Information Sciences. The special topic of this thesis is the archiving of the Dresdner Bank Intranet. Scheiding offers here a exemplary setting: First she discusses the problems, the needs and aims of archiving a intranet. Then some special approaches ("selective approach" versus "comprehensive approach"), technical solutions ("migration") and the archiving process are described and discussed. Because of the fact that the project wasn’t finished before the article or the thesis were published, the authoress couldn’t come to a final conclusion or binding recommendations concerning the archiving of websites. The article is a good introduction to the topic archiving the intranet of a big company. In the annotations it offers a lot of links and hints to further reading. |
| From: Matthias Schulze |
| Date created: 07.02.2005 |
| Charter on the Preservation of Digital Heritage |
The most important aspect of this document is perhaps its existence. The “UNESCO - Charta for the preservation of digital heritage” of October 2003 declares in its fourth article a need for action. There is an acute threat for digital heritage. The text continues: “Awareness-raising and advocacy is urgent, alerting policy-makers and sensitizing the general public to both the potential of the digital media and the practicalities of preservation.” The Charta is an instrument in this sense.
Its first article defines “digital heritage” as consisting of “unique resources of human knowledge and expression” comprising both “born digitals” and those “converted into digital form”. Article seven is not really more explicit. Under the heading “Selecting what should be kept” it states: “As with all documentary heritage, selection principles may vary between countries, although the main criteria for deciding what digital materials to keep would be their significance and lasting cultural, scientific, evidential or other value. ‘Born digital’ materials should clearly be given priority. Selection decisions and subsequent reviews need to be carried out in an accountable manner, and be based on defined principles, policies, procedures and standards”.
According to this, policy-makers in the different countries should define what is of significance, what is of lasting cultural value, whose scientific value is to be estimated high enough … to be selected for preservation. Who, the singular countries or an international organ, should decide on such “main criteria” and how shall their implementation be controlled? Questions like these are - as with every international Charta - not answered. As before: The merit of the Charta is that it brings the problem and the questions to the perception of policy-makers. It is not for a Charta to fix regulatory statutes.
A thing to note is article two, covering the “Access to the digital heritage”, which states in its first sentence: “The purpose of preserving the digital heritage is to ensure that it remains accessible to the public”. It is demanded that a “fair balance between the legitimate rights of creators and other rights holders and the interests of the public to access digital heritage materials should be reaffirmed and promoted, in accordance with international norms and agreements”. |
| From: Stefan Rohde-Enslin |
| Date created: 02.02.2005 |
| Assistance for Archiving and Use of Digital Documents in Local Archives |
By the manner of its narration this paper nearly exceeds the expectations of a recommendation, but rather seems to address a wider public of persons involved in long-time preservation of digital records that yet have to be furnished with basic information.
Even at a first glance the annotations as well as the list of topics show that the authors managed to cover most of the matter, even the life cycle concept addressed directly and indirectly in more than once instance. The questions currently discussed by the archival community ranging from authenticity to implementation of multilayered structured filing plans are listed clearly in 8 paragraphs at the end of the paper in a manner to be understood by the municipal departments transferring records to the archives.
From the point of view of an archivist employed by a state archives a few points of possible
criticism stand out, and a few ought to be exemplified below.
The definition of digital long term preservation (p. 2) rather is addressed towards outsiders and one or the other sales person of the software business. The concept seems to be no longer disputed among the archival, librarian and museums community.
Right at the beginning the the authors emphasize the document management systems emerging among business and administrative agencies. Of course, they are an immediate challenge for the archivist – some look at them rather as a nightmare. But the experiences of those archives, in most cases outside of Germany, that have been preserving digital records for some years, indicate that data bases and rather unstructured digital documents will make up a considerable amount of the records to be expected in future, just as they were in the past. This fact is missed not only in the recommendations but also by most of the discussion in Germany. Therefore it was prudent to typify the recommendations as a preliminary platform (p. 2). Standards and opportunities continue to evolve rapidly, and the fact that a compilation of 2002 respectively 2001 needs updating cannot be reproved as a grave deficiency.
In this context an additional remark on metadata might have been expected, to facilitate future identification and management of digital documents. A number of metadata sets have recently been discussed in public. Part of those emerging from the archival community rather apply to documents from document management systems, but in some cases can be modified for unstructured digital records. In the case of data bases metadata are required not only for field definitions. The adaptation of librarian metadata lists – for example the Dublin Core – as a benchmark without due adaptation is very misleading in all cases, because archival records have to be managed in terms of multilevel structures and filing lists.
The paragraph on the future prospects of archives (p. 3) enters on a rather controversial field. By the meanwhile prevailing definition of long term preservation of digital records this can be regarded as a continuation of the traditional assignment of public archives and not a completely new challenge. The subject matter – keeping records of administration – is the same. The contents stem from the same group of records creators. The definition widely accepted is aware of a change of the medium – from paper to digital media. But the definitions of transfer, archival value, communication and use in a broader sense have remained the same. Advocating this position has become a crucial question for the existence of archives, who otherwise would be endangered of being degraded to historical parchment and paper repositories and being replaced by computer centres. On p. 3 this successful argumentation seems to have turned all too relative, even though its aims are presented later (p. 5).
Perhaps the offer right at the beginning of providing an IT-environment by the public archives for transfer of digital records from the systems of the records creators goes a bit far (p. 8). Even if archives will in many cases be faced with the necessity of participating e.g. with the conversion of files into flat formats, the standard requirement should be upheld that the transferring agency should hand the records over to the archives in an appropriate format. Experiences seem to show that this can be achieved far better by the IT-system of the agency or department that initially created and managed the records, than the archivists, who for this task have to get acquainted with an unfamiliar system. Setting up an IT-structure for long time retention and communication is by itself an adequate and also expensive future task.
The list of file formats for transfer of the records to the archives (p. 6 and additionally note 14) seems to consider most of those so far identified, perhaps with exception of the traditional ASCII-code that might turn out to remain of interest in the future. Probably as practical concession towards municipal departments a few alternative formats are enumerated that had better not been mentioned. RTF e.g. has turned out to be a very ephemeral Microsoft product emerging in ever changing versions. Therefore it might have all but disappeared as an exchange format within a few years. Postscript is a relatively stable vector compound but perhaps too complicated and too far linked with modern print drivers to survive on the long run. SVG has become a W3C standard. But it appears to be put to use primarily for representing complex images. PDF however – as PDF (A) – is being established as a standard, especially as it is promoted by courts of justice and police agencies in Germany and abroad, and in due course it may be suitable for this purpose – to accommodate text documents as well as graphics, even letter heads and images.
Altogether the recommendations appear to be a compilation that can be expected to
serve its purpose and they will prove to be an invaluable reference tool for municipal archives in Germany for years to come. |
| From: Lothar Saupe |
| Date created: 17.05.2004 |
| Archiving |
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| From: Susanne Dobratz |
| Date created: 25.03.2004 |
| Digital Libraries in Universities |
| This article gives a rough overview on document formats, sogftware and tools and it features the comparison of software systems beeing used to establish a digital library, or better to establish a document server. It is a good starting point for further enquiries in order to find good software for setting up digital libraries. All in all, this article gives a rough overview of the topic and can be used as a fisrt introduction to electronic publishing in general. |
| From: Susanne Dobratz |
| Date created: 15.03.2004 |
| Electronic Archiving |
This article gives a very good overview and describes the problem from a classical archivists point of view.
At the beginning a definition of the concept "archiving" is beeing made and the demands from the archivists point of view are outlined in comparison to the information technology approch. After describing the legal mandate, the author discusses the role of archives in detail. Primariliy the IT-supportet workflow management and the question of an archiving policy is beeing discussed. Within this discussion all nessecary operations an archivist has to fullill are displayed. Special attention is drawn to the electronic records.
Lastly a comparison between different methods, such as:
1. Printout of electronic recxords,
2. Usage of hybrid systems,
3. Archiving in a software independent form,
4. Archiving using special standard formats, and
5. Archiving within the original application software
is beeing made in order to show the importance of the topic. |
| From: Susanne Dobratz |
| Date created: 15.03.2004 |
| Archiving the Internet - An Issue for Record Offices? |
This work discussed the topic under 2 main standpoints:
1. Archiving of internet sources(classical websites) and
2. Archiving of online- available digital publications
The discussion is carried out using 2 selected example websites on behalf of the Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart (HSTAS). After describing all the different kinds of document types, that are parts of the selected internet sites, different archiing strategies are beeing presented. So, strategies of the German National Library, the Bundesarchiv and another archive (Archiv der sozialen Demokratie) are shown in detail. These are compared with the strategies of the Pandora archivs of the australian National Library and the concept of the Nordic Web Archive done by the Norwegian National Library. In the end a concept for archiving the HSTAS websites is developed.
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| From: Susanne Dobratz |
| Date created: 15.03.2004 |
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