Local Authority (LA) Archives reside within an already challenging environment of legislative obligations, corporate compliance, resource limitations and budgetary cuts. Due to advances in technology and increasing user expectations of requiring information in a more immediate and accessible way, this has exacerbated the already difficult task of providing an Archive service within a local authority framework. LA Archives have a duty of care to their collections regardless of the format of the material contained therein. The statutory requirements of preserving a digital collection in perpetuity is a much more challenging prospect than preserving a physical collection; digital objects are far more fragile and often come with greater and more complex preservation risks when compared to their analogue counterparts.
This dissertation discusses the evolving role of Archivists and Information Professionals with reference to the fairly recent inclusion of born digital objects being collected by Archival repositories. It will identify some of the challenges faced by LA Archivists who must address the prospect of having to increasingly accession these digital assets. It includes a brief discussion about the National Records of Scotland [NRS] Skills for the Future digital preservation projects; “Counting the Bits – Local Authority Capacity Planning” and “Good Foundations – Local Authority Digital Preservation Guidance” which highlight the challenges of digital preservation within a local authority environment.
Drawing from my experience as a local authority Archivist for Inverclyde Council; Inverclyde Archives has been chosen as an example of one such Scottish local authority Archive service faced with the challenges that accompany the onset of caring for digital Archive service faced with the challenges that accompany the onset of caring for digitalassets in their custody.
In addition to identifying some of the issues of being responsible for a digital archive, the next logical step is to investigate whether any of these issues are likely to pose arisk to the sustainability and accessibility of the digital collection in future. Given the large scope of digital file formats which may reside within an Archival collection, one commonly used file format has been chosen as a starting point to discuss possible preservation risks. Within the context of Inverclyde Archives, the three most common digital file formats within the collection are PDF (portable document format), Microsoft Word documents and JPEG files.
As PDF files are considered one of the most robustand prevalent digital file formats both on the web and within many organisations, the focus will be on identifying any potential preservation risks present in PDFs. Not all PDF files are created equally; the PDF/A version is deemed appropriate for Archivalstorage and is the preferred version accepted by many large Archival institutions worldwide such as the Library of Congress in the USA. Less so in the UK; in the case ofthe Archaeology Data Service [ADS], the preferred textual document format acceptedfor digital ingest is whatever format was used to create the digital file as “PDF contentis often downsampled during the PDF process, leading to loss in the original data streams.” In the instance where the original created file is not available, PDF/A is preferred by ADS. However, many document creators, users and those who are responsible for thesetypes of files are not aware of the different varieties and flavours of PDFs available, nor that some could pose more of a preservation risk than others.
As part of this dissertation research, I took part in a student project run by the Digital Preservation Coalition [DPC] in partnership with the veraPDF Project to trial a set ofnew PDF validation tools. Running the veraPDF validation software allows the user toinvestigate whether their PDF files conform to ISO 19005 standards (i.e. if the files are PDF/A compliant) and can help identify any files showing evidence of possible preservation risks. This knowledge allows the user to make decisions on how best to mitigate these issues in an attempt to preserve the PDF files for future use.
NB. In the event of quotes or citations from any of the DPA2018 finalist essays/theses the author should be duly acknowledged, in line with usual academic practice.