1. An Introduction to Tessella and The Safety Deposit Box Platform
Mark Evans
Digital Archiving Practice Manager

2. Tessella Overview What we do Key facts What makes us different
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

3. Tessella Locations Dedicated archive practices in Abingdon UK
Washington DC

4. Archiving Services Complete Archiving Solution Long Term Support
Consultancy
Research
SDB Technology:
Archive & Active
Preservation
Customization
& Integration

5. Genuine Innovation in Archiving
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.
SDB – Safety Deposit Box
Open source x86 emulator build for KB (Royal Dutch Library) and Nationaal Archief (Dutch Archive).
Digital Archive platform that provides “Active Preservation” Capabilities

6. Digital Preservation Research
150 man year EU funded research into preservation strategies with 15 leading organisations.
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

7. 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

8. Preservation Planning
Safety Deposit Box
Based on the OAIS
reference model
Evolving technology
since 2003
In use at leading
institutions
OAIS
Archival
Storage
Administration
Preservation Planning
Data
Management
Ingest
Access
Includes “Active Preservation” framework
(safeguard against technology obsolescence)

9. Safety Deposit Box

10. Safety Deposit Box – Deployed Locations
UK National Archives
The British Library
Dutch National Archives
Rotterdam Regional
Archives
Wellcome
Trust Library
Swiss Federal Archives
Malaysian Archives

11. Safety Deposit Box - Offerings
SDB can be offered in 3 primary configurations
Accession
builder
Standalone Archive
SDB search &
browse
Accession
auto-loader
Web service API
Custom
workflows
Black-box Archive
Custom / 3rd
party access
3rd party
applications
Active Preservation
Plug-in
Storage adapter
3rd party content storage

12. Ingest toolkit 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

13. Passive Preservation 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

14. Active 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

15. 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

16. Characterization 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

17. Preservation Planning
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

18. Preservation Action - Migration
Perform approved pathway
Complex mappings allowed
Partial migrations allowed
Validation:
Re-measure invariant properties
Tool specific
Ingest migrated files + metadata

19. Thank you for your attention
Questions
Thank you for your attention
Mark Evans
(1)