ab&dr committee report

Property Records Industry Association

AB&DR Committee Report

PRIAJuly 14, 2005Honolulu, HI

Property Records Industry Association • www.pria.us

Who Else Is Thinking About How To Preserve Electronic Records? AIIM C-10 - Digital Image Quality

and Preservation Study Group ANSI/ARMA-16-200X - Conversion

and Migrations Criteria in Records Keeping Systems

IS&T - Society for Imaging Science & Technology Archiving Conference


Who Else Cont’d NAGARA - Association of State

Archivist NARA - National Archives &

Records Administration


Where Are We Now? We’ve attended industry meetings and

conferences on electronic preservation. We’ve polled Recorders about

preservation requirements at their state archives.

We’ve issued a progress report for PRIA membership review & comment. http://www.pria.us/archivalcomm.htm


Report Summary Optical media - Not intended for

“archiving” permanent records. Microfilm - Good preservation qualities.

Simple and reliable. Timely data recovery could be an issue.

Magnetic - Content Management technology has potential.

Layers of Insurance


Virginia Circuit Court Records Preservation Program

1990 - Library of Virginia began a program to preserve pre-1914 chancery records. LVA receives $1.50 fee from recording land

transactions & judgements. 50% granted to local clerk’s offices for

microfilming & indexing services.

May/June 2003 - Began scanning 18th & 19th century documents to improve their legibility on microfilm.


Virginia Circuit Court Records Preservation Program

2004? - Began a parallel program to preserve these digitized records. EMC’s Centera CAS System

Addresses the storage of “fixed content” records On-line active archive of non-changing data.

LVA uses “Self Healing” RAID Mirrored RAID devices that talk to each other.

Data continually tested at the bit level. A 27 character key is constructed for each file that

uniquely I.D.s it as the original with original content.


Content Addressable Storage Providers

EMC - Centera - April 2002 Pricey - $100K - $200K Proprietary hardware & software interface.

Archivias - ArC - April 2004 Claim to be 1/2 Centera’s cost Open CAS interface

StorageTek - IntelliStore - June 2005 $75,000 for a 4TB “starter” System Uses SHA256 hash algorithm rather than

“flawed” MD5 used by Centera.


Library of VA Policy on optical media

Optical disks are accepted for security storage only and there is a fee for storing nonpermanent material. Due to the various formats, hardware and software variations, and the continuous changes occurring in the technology, it would be impossible for LVA to maintain the disks permanently. LVA will maintain any disks it generates in the course of its own scanning projects or when doing scanning for another office as part of the commitment to this technology. However, any other public entity sending disks for security storage to LVA is responsible for maintaining this information (meaning updating, recopying if necessary, maintaining the software and hardware to read it, etc.) LVA will only provide proper environmental storage for this information when requested.

Property Records Industry Association

Washington State Digital Archives

PRIAJuly 14, 2005Honolulu, HI


Washington State Digital Archives Opened October 1, 2004 Goals

Preserve electronic records of historical/legal significance

Ensure usability of data into the future Provide on-line access to most

requested document types


Washington State Digital Archives Targeted document types

local government archival (permanent) documents

land records marriage records maps legislative history (ordinances, council

minutes) court records


Washington State Digital Archives Targeted document types (cont.)

state legislative history e-mails of elected officials/directors web shots of state government web

pages state-wide election records top 100 historical documents


Washington State Digital Archives Archival records must be:

secure accessible in the future unaltered - archives must be able to

certify data content is unaltered


Washington State Digital Archives How does it work

Archives signs interagency agreement with agency transmitting data

Data transmitted via FTP SSH encryption


Washington State Digital Archives How does it work (cont.)

Secure authenticated transmission Using Techtia, archives issues a digital

certificate for each site. Techtia captures computer information to

ensure transmission coming from trusted site


Washington State Digital Archives

How does it work (cont.) documents “ingested” into archives using

Microsoft Biztalk software One copy of record is XML wrapped & sent to deep

storage XML is self-encapsulated, self-describing, each record has

it’s own entry platform neutral, allows reconstruction of record

One copy kept in archives database “Original” record (as transmitted) stored on tape off-

line


Washington State Digital Archives How does it work (cont..)

all three versions backed-up separate web-friendly file kept on

media server scanned (.tiff) documents converted

to Djvu for web arraying watermarked “unofficial record”


Washington State Digital Archives Refreshing data

Plan to duplicate all data in four years with new hardware purchase

Recommending duplicating data at least every six to eight years


Washington State Digital Archives Microfilm recommendation

Recommendation to continue microfilming for 4 - 5 years until digital archives technology is proven and stable


Washington State Digital Archives Where are they?

Governor Locke’s electronic records Essential records (birth, death, marriage)

from some counties Variety of historical records (naturalization,

census, top 5 historical documents) Negotiating interlocal agreements with

several local government agencies www.digitalarchives.wa.gov


What’s NARA Doing? Issued RFP for development of

digital archive plan Vendor selection expected

August/September Proposed two-year development of

digital work-flow Estimated six year project

ab&dr committee report

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