How do we look after digital archives?

The Digital Preservation Service uses Lifecycle Management to inform the development of workflows and processes. Without intervention early in the life of a digital object, it may become difficult or impossible to preserve it later.

Lifecycle Management refers to the actions and changes applied to digital information and systems over time. The Digital Curation Centre’s Lifecycle Model provides a well-established model. Though the digital lifecycle is not necessarily a linear path, and some activities may occur multiple times, the overarching stages include: 

Creation or Acquisition: digital records, information, or systems are created, built, or brought into the custody of the University and appropriate metadata (such as creator, rights management, and software dependencies) are captured and recorded in interoperable format based on metadata standards 

Selection: as soon as possible, record, data, or system owners assign a retention period for individual assets or type of asset (for example Committee Papers or a snapshot of a database system)  

Active Use: digital records, information, or systems are currently engaged and accessed by University students, staff, and partners 

Transfer to Long-term Preservation (Archive): while the nature of digital records, data, and systems means that assets can exist in multiple locations, in different forms, simultaneously, at some point selected digital assets will need to be permanently retired to infrastructure purpose-built for long-term preservation only, to reduce strain and the threat of cyber attacks on live infrastructure 

Storage and Fixity: selected records, data, and systems are stored on appropriate storage infrastructure and checked for fixity (also called ‘integrity checking’) on a regular schedule 

Monitoring and Reporting: records, data, and systems are tracked and analysed in integrated, automated systems so that reports about stored data can be generated to support business and management decision-making and resource planning 

Preservation Planning: based on data analysis and relevant contextual information, active strategies are implemented to migrate data (records, media, etc) to new infrastructure and/or data or systems are transformed to mitigate risk of obsolescence  

Access and Discovery: data (records, media, etc) and metadata are maintained in managed systems to ensure designated users have meaningful access in a format that supports their requirements 

Re-use and Re-purposing: designated users can carry out other activities with digital records, data, metadata, or systems beyond their original use 

Deletion: records, data, or systems are permanently deleted