An Introduction to Tessella and The Safety Deposit Box Platform

1
An Introduction to Tessella and The Safety
Deposit Box Platform

• Mark Evans
• Digital Archiving Practice Manager

2
Tessella Overview

• What we do
• Information technology consulting services for
  leaders in RD, 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
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
Digital Archive platform that provides Active
Preservation Capabilities
Open source x86 emulator build for KB (Royal
Dutch Library) and Nationaal Archief (Dutch
Archive).
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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
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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

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Safety Deposit Box
Based on the OAIS reference model
Evolving technology since 2003
In use at leading institutions
Includes Active Preservation framework (safeguar
d against technology obsolescence)
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Safety Deposit Box
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Safety Deposit Box Deployed Locations
The British Library
Rotterdam Regional Archives
Wellcome Trust Library
Swiss Federal Archives
Malaysian Archives
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Safety Deposit Box - Offerings

• SDB can be offered in 3 primary configurations

Standalone Archive
Accession builder
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
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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Preservation Action - Migration

• Perform approved pathway
• Complex mappings allowed
• Partial migrations allowed
• Validation
• Re-measure invariant properties
• Tool specific
• Ingest migrated files metadata

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Questions

• Thank you for your attention
• Mark Evans
• Mark.evans_at_tessella.com
• (1) 240 403 7504
• http//www.tessella.com