Dark Archive

[Annamarie Klose Hrubes]

Hi,

My institution wants to preserve our digitized and born-digital files. While CONTENTdm and our potential IR would provide access to presentation files, we are discussing the possible need for a dark archive. The goal is to store archival, master files (e.g. uncompressed TIFFs scans for documents), presentation files (e.g. PDF), and metadata together in compliance with OAIS. Can anyone share their insights regarding their institution's dark archive (or lack thereof), e.g. server recommendations, Archivematica integration?

Thank you,
Anna

Annamarie Klose Hrubes

Digital Initiatives Librarian

David & Lorraine Cheng Library

William Paterson University

973-720-2345

kloseh...@wpunj.edu

[Heidi Elaine Dowding]

Hi Anna,

I work as the digital preservation librarian at Indiana University. We have a pretty complex infrastructure, but I can't say it's all absolutely best practice as of yet. Our main preservation copies are stored on our Scholarly Data Archive, which is HPSS-based and uses tape for the main storage. This is... mostly dark. Beyond that, we're part of the Digital Preservation Network and Academic Preservation Trust, which are a network of dark archives and a dark archive respectively. We don't use Archivematica, but that's on a list of things to explore down the line.

I would say if your budget is tight, I'm not sure if APT or DPN are workable for you, but there is also a great user community working through issues like bagging and deposit so there's a lot of value. On the much cheaper end, tape storage is the cheapest and most efficient, but is very dark and requires solid deposit practices to ensure that you can retrieve content. 

Others who are more technically savvy might have better recommendations- most of our storage infrastructure is managed by our central IT department, so I'm somewhat blissfully ignorant. Hopefully some of this is helpful!

Heidi

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Heidi Elaine Kelly (she/her/hers)

https://heidielainekelly.com/ | https://libraries.indiana.edu/heidi-kelly

dowd...@gmail.com | heid...@indiana.edu