Third Digital Preservation Award 2007
Press Release Number Two - 27th September 2007
Accolade for new tool to save digital archives for future generations
27 September 2007
An innovative tool to analyse and identify computer file formats has
won the 2007 Digital Preservation Award. DROID, developed by The National
Archives in London, can examine any mystery file and identify its format.
The tool works by gathering clues from the internal 'signatures' hidden
inside every computer file, as well as more familiar elements such as
the filename extension (.jpg, for example), to generate a highly accurate
'guess' about the software that will be needed to read the file.
Identifying file formats is a thorny issue for archivists. Organisations
such as the National Archives have an ever-increasing volume of electronic
records in their custody, many of which will be crucial for future historians
to understand 21st-century Britain. But with rapidly changing technology
and an unpredictable hardware base, preserving files is only half of
the challenge. There is no guarantee that today's files will be readable
or even recognisable using the software of the future.
Now, by using DROID and its big brother, the unique file format database
known as PRONOM, experts at the National Archives are well on their way
to cracking the problem. Once DROID has labelled a mystery file, PRONOM's
extensive catalogue of software tools can advise curators on how best
to preserve the file in a readable format. The database includes crucial
information on software and hardware lifecycles, helping to avoid the
obsolescence problem. And it will alert users if the program needed to
read a file is no longer supported by manufacturers.
PRONOM's system of identifiers has been adopted by the UK government
and is the only nationally-recognised standard in its field.
The judges chose The National Archives from a strong shortlist of five
contenders, whittled down from the original list of thirteen. The prestigious
award was presented in a special ceremony at The British Museum on 27
September 2007 as part of the 2007 Conservation Awards, sponsored by
Sir Paul McCartney.
Ronald Milne, Chair of the Board of Directors of the Digital Preservation
Coalition, which sponsors the award, said:
"The National Archives fully deserves the recognition that accompanies
this award."
For more information on the two tools please see: the PRONOM
Technical Registry and Digital
Record Object Identification (DROID) file format identification.
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Notes
to Editors
- The £5000 Digital Preservation Award is sponsored by the Digital
Preservation Coalition. This prestigious award recognises achievement
and encourages innovation in the new and challenging field of digital
preservation - simply put, preserving things whose very existence depends
on computers.
- The Digital Preservation Coalition was established in 2001 to foster
joint action to address the urgent challenges of securing the preservation
of digital resources in the UK and to work with others internationally
to secure our global digital memory and knowledge base. For further
information, see www.dpconline.org
- The Conservation Awards are the UK's leading awards for the preservation
of cultural heritage. They are sponsored by Sir Paul McCartney and
supported by key organisations in conservation and collections care:
the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), English Heritage,
the Institute of Conservation (Icon), the Digital Preservation Coalition
(DPC) and the National Preservation Office (NPO).
- For more information on the other short listed partnerships, see
www.conservationawards.org.uk
- Details of the 2007 judges are available online at www.dpconline.org/graphics/awards/2007panel.html
- The National Archives is at the heart of information policy - setting
standards and supporting innovation in information and records management
across the UK, and providing a practical framework of best practice
for opening up and encouraging the re-use of public sector information.
This work helps inform today´s decisions and ensure that they
become tomorrow´s permanent record. The National Archives is
also the official archive for England, Wales and the central UK government,
containing 900 years of history from Domesday Book to the present,
with records ranging from parchment and paper scrolls through to recently
created digital files and archived websites. Increasingly, these records
are being put online, making them universally accessible. For more
information, see www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
Press Release Number One - 5th June 2007
THE 2007 CONSERVATION AWARDS - DIGITAL PRESERVATION AWARD
Short-list Announcement Today
- 5 June 2007 -
The Digital Preservation Award of £5,000 is sponsored by the Digital
Preservation Coalition. This prestigious Award recognises achievement
and encourages innovation in the new and challenging field of digital
preservation – simply put, preserving things whose very existence
depends on computers.
Short-listed for the Digital Preservation Award are:
1. LIFE: The British Library.
LIFE (Lifecycle Information for E-Literature) has made a major contribution to
understanding the long-term costs of digital preservation, an essential step
in helping institutions plan for the future. Its methodology models the digital
lifecycle and calculates the costs of preserving digital information for the
next 5, 10 or 100 years. Organisations can apply this process to understand
costs and focus resources on those items or collections most in need of them.
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ls/life/1/conference.shtml
2. Web Curator Tool software development project: National Library
of New Zealand
& The British Library.
The web is a huge and interconnected digital asset with which we are
all familiar, and one in which material changes and disappears with frightening
regularity. Conscious of this problem, the National Library of New Zealand
and The British Library worked together in an international collaboration
to build this tool, which supports selective and thematic web-harvesting
by collaborating users in a library environment. Swift development over
just 10 months enabled it to be released as free software for the benefit
of the international web-archiving community in September 2006, from
webcurator.sf.net.
http://webcurator.sourceforge.net/
3. Active Preservation at The National Archives - PRONOM Technical
Registry and DROID file format identification tool: The National Archives
of the UK.
One of the fundamental challenges of digital preservation is to understand
the technologies required to access digital information, and plan the
actions we will need to take to ensure continued access in the future
in the face of constant technological change. Is the software needed
to read this document still supported by the supplier, and is the format
of this digital movie still readable by most computers? PRONOM is a unique
and innovative online service which helps to answer questions like these
and includes a knowledge base of technical information about over 600
file formats and 250 software tools, which has been developed by The
National Archives to answer these challenges.
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/aboutapps/pronom/puid.htm
4. PARADIGM (The Personal
Archives Accessible in Digital Media): Bodleian
Library, University of Oxford, & John Rylands University Library,
University of Manchester.
Personal archives are important components of cultural memory, but inexperience
in curating their modern counterparts – e-mail, digital photographs,
online calendars, blogs and many more - puts the survival of today's
personal histories at risk. The diversity and volatility of digital technology
far exceeds that of any medium that creators, archivists and researchers
have previously worked with. The Paradigm project has worked with politicians,
archivists and researchers to investigate these challenges in an exemplar
project so that the archives of significant contemporaries can continue
to enrich our history.
http://www.paradigm.ac.uk/
5. Digital Repository Audit and Certification: CRL, RLG-OCLC,
NARA, the DCC, DPE and Nestor.
As the number of organisations, both public and private, preserving
digital information increases, it becomes important to be able to assess
how well they are doing and how well-prepared they are for the unknown
challenges of the future. The Trustworthy Repositories Audit and Certification
(TRAC) Criteria and Checklist (maintained by the US Center for Research
Libraries), the nestor project's Criteria Catalogue and the Digital
Repository Audit Method Based on Risk Assessment (DRAMBORA) published
by the Digital Curation Centre and DigitalPreservationEurope present
complementary methods for the self assessment, audit and certification
of digital repository infrastructures.
http://www.repositoryaudit.eu/
All the short-listed projects will give a presentation to the Digital
Preservation Award judges on 19 June. The winners of the Conservation
Awards 2007 will be announced at the British Museum on 27 September.
- Ends -
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Notes to Editors:
The Conservation Awards are the UK’s leading awards for the preservation
of cultural heritage. They are sponsored by Sir Paul McCartney and supported
by key organisations in conservation and collections care: the Museums,
Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), English Heritage, the Institute
of Conservation (Icon) and the National Preservation Office. The Digital
Preservation Coalition and the Anna Plowden Trust sponsor the awards
in their names. For more information visit the Awards website: www.conservationawards.org.uk,
which includes links to information about the supporting partners and
sponsors.
The Digital Preservation Coalition was established in 2001 to foster
joint action to address the urgent challenges of securing the preservation
of digital resources in the UK and to work with others internationally
to secure our global digital memory and knowledge base. For further information
see the website at: http://www.dpconline.org
2007 Judges
Kevin Ashley (Chair of the Judging Panel), Head of
Digital Archives Department, University of London Computer Centre.
Michael Day, Research Officer at UKOLN, University
of Bath.
Helen Hockx-Yu, Programme Manager, Joint Information
Systems Committee (JISC).
William Kilbride, Research Manager, Glasgow Museums.
Andreas Rauber, Associate Professor, Department of
Software Technology and Interactive Systems (IFS), The Vienna University
of Technology.
Chris Rusbridge, Director, Digital Curation Centre
(DCC).
Helen Shenton, Head of Collection Care, the British
Library.
Dave Thompson, Digital Curator, Wellcome Library.
See the Digital Preservation Coalition website for further information
on the judges:
http://www.dpconline.org/graphics/awards/2007panel.html
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