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VERS STORY | STANDARD | ASSESSMENT | PROJECTS | DIGITAL ARCHIVE | TRAINING | TOOLKIT | PUBLICATIONS | |
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| Digital Archive Project The Digital Archive project evolved from a need to ensure Victoria’s digital heritage is preserved for future generations. As the State’s archival authority, Public Record Office Victoria (PROV) is responsible for the preservation of the permanent or ‘archival’ records of the Victorian government. PROV has been involved in the management and preservation of physical records since its establishment in 1973. However, its focus has shifted in recent years with the increased creation of digital records by government. The Victorian Electronic Record Strategy was developed in 2000 as a standard for the long-term preservation of the digital archives of Victoria. The VERS strategy supports the preservation of Victoria’s digital heritage. As part of the program of VERS Centre of Excellence, PROV was provided with funding to build a digital repository to store the digital archives of the state. The Digital Archive project was undertaken between January 2004 and August 2005. The project brought together a team with diverse skills and experience in digital recordkeeping, to develop a Digital Archive facility at PROV. Project Objectives The objectives of the Digital Archive project closely aligned to the PROV mandate to manage, preserve and provide access to records in its collection. The key objectives of the project were to:
Project Objectives The key outcomes of the Digital Archive project were:
Services to Government Clients Since the completion of the Digital Archive, Victorian government agencies are provided with:
Services to Public Clients Since the completion of the Digital Archive, the general public are provided with:
Request for Tender Process PROV completed a public tender process to engage a contractor to develop the Digital Archive in 2003. The RFT documentation is available for download: Digital Archive RFT zip file (Size: 11 Mb) Fujitsu Australia (known as DMR Consulting before the merger with Fujitsu) were successful in securing the contract and were engaged to build the Digital Archive for PROV, along with their business partners Documentum and EMC. As part of the preparation of the Digital Archive request for tender, a detailed Functional Specification was developed. The Specification is structured according to the functional design of the Digital Archive:
Within each of these functional areas, a range of requirements was established. These requirements formed the basis of the design of the Digital Archive. Solution Overview The following diagram shows a functional view of the implemented Digital Archive solution:
An alternative view of the solution is the individual system components:
Finally, the following technical view of the solution shows some of the technologies used by the Digital Archive:
The Digital Archive is a solution made up of several parts that coordinate to provide different services to Victorian government agencies, PROV clients and PROV Staff. Victorian government agencies can transfer records to PROV either on physical media (CD ROMs, Tapes or DVDs) or alternatively they can connect to the External Inbox and transfer records directly over the internet. Once these records have been accepted into PROV custody, they will be able to access their records online over the internet. PROV clients are able to access the Digital Archive over the internet. PROV has replacing the Archives @ Victoria web site with Access the Collection; a new access system that is provided by the Digital Archive. This new system allow searching and browsing of archival information, ordering of physical records for use in the reading room and online viewing of digital records. PROV staff use the Digital Archive to manage the transfer, arrangement and description, accession and custody of digital records. The Digital Archive is also used by PROV staff for user management, and security, reports, searching and ordering of records and the downloading of digital records. The system stores digital records and information about them in several storage areas during transfer (External Inbox, Internal Inbox, Quarantine and Processing). Once PROV has approved the transfer it is moved from temporary storage in the Processing area and is committed to permanent storage in the digital repository. The Digital Archive solution was developed on Documentum’s Enterprise Content Management platform. Customisations to system functionality and internal/external user interfaces were undertaken using the Documentum development toolkits and J2EE. A key design criterion for the Digital Archive was that it will “never lose electronic records”. With this in mind, the Digital Archive utilizes key storage technologies from EMC. These storage technologies include EMC’s Celerra Network Attached Storage system and their Centera Content Addressed Storage systems. These storage solutions are designed to guard against data loss or corruption by using various duplication and replication techniques. Other technologies that are used in the solution include Oracle RDBMS
for indexes and transactional data, Cisco networking devices, load balancing
and bandwidth control devices, Apache web servers and Tomcat applications
servers. Core database and content services will run on Sun servers, which
will be supported by several HP servers running web, application, virus
scanning and other supporting applications.
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