Introduction

An increasing amount of digital collection held by small institutions, SOHOs (Small Office/Home Office) and private users with limited know-how and awareness of digital preservation drives the need for new approaches of fully-automated archiving systems.

Large heritage institutions have been addressing the challenges posed by digital preservation need for some time, small instituions are less prepared to handle these challenges. They have increasing amounts of data that represent considerable value. Research and development in the area of digital preservation is driven by memory institutions and large businesses. The available tools, services and models are mainly developed to meet the demands of these professional settings.

We analysed the requirements and research issues for fully-automated archiving systems to be used in environments where little professional knowhow and awareness on digital preservation issues is available, such as private Users, SOHOs and small institutions. Based on the requirements and supported by available tools and services, we are designed an archiving system to provide digital preservation solutions specifically for digital holdings in small office environment. It hides the technical complexity of digital preservation challenges

The system combines bitstream preservation and logical preservation strategies. It supports the acquisition of digital data from different sources. The logical preservation is performed by using established best practice preservation strategies. The system supports multiple migration pathways for object formats. The archiving system documents object characteristics and performed actions in metadata. Multiple backup versions on different storage media avoids the physical loss of the data caused by physical deterioration of the media.

Publications

Team

Stephan Strodl		Andreas Rauber
Petar Petrov		Michael Greifeneder
Maria Egly (AIT - Austrian Institute of Technology)

Former Team Members: Florian Motlik

Kevin Stadler