Knowledge Eater

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The NAGARA/CoSA Conference is over. It was a great conference. I met some wonderful people, visited with some old friends, and brushed up on digital initiatives/standards. As always, I am saving the best for last. Sometime this week I will post about the most interesting person I met. I spent some time talking with him about digital initiatives at the National Archives which will blow your mind! For tonight, here is an “in a nutshell” look at where my hours and thoughts were over the last few days.

• The President’s Directive on Managing Government Records with Meg Phillips, Electronic Records Manager, National Archives and Records Administration
• Hiring Electronic Records Archivists- What Expertise is Required with Professors and Archivists from Kansas and North Carolina
• Electronic Records Roundtable
• ISO 16363 Audit and Certification of Trustworthy Digital Repositories with Mark Conrad, Archives Specialist, National Archives and Records Administration and Archivists and Technology Specialists from Kentucky
• Use of Public Records Laws to Bypass Discovery Rules with Records Managers from Ohio and Nevada and two Attorneys from New Mexico
• Electronic Records Archives (ERA): Accomplishments and Lessons Learned with Meg Phillips, Electronic Records Manager, National Archives and Records Administration
• 1940 Census: The Next Generation with Training Officers and Archivists from National Archives and Records Administration
• Who Controls Where the Governors’ Papers Go with Archivists from Texas, Nevada and South Dakota
• Redaction, Expungement and Sealing of Electronic Records with Attorneys, Administrators, and Records Managers from New Mexico, Tennessee, and Arizona

• ……………..NARA holds Congressional Records as a courtesy, but they do not have legal custody. I didn’t know that!
  
• ……………..At this time, ERA holds about 18TB of electronic Congressional Records that are not accessible to the public through NARA.
• ……………..At this time, ERA holds 246+TB of 2010 Census data, 34TB of Federal Records, and 80TB of Presidential Records.
• ……………..There were 550 Hard Drives from the George W. Bush Administration.
• ……………..George W. Bush changed the law to have his records sent to College Station instead of the State Archives.
• ……………..Georgia Tech developed sophisticated software to mull through data on hard drives allowing a 10% drop down to what actually needs to be addressed as a record.
• ……………..NARA is using open source solutions to manage digital information. Nice… Wooohooo!
  
• ……………..The Open Archives Information System (OAIS) Reference Model (Magenta Book– June 2012) is available at http://public.ccsds.org/publications/archive/650x0m2.pdf.
• ……………..Trustworthy Repositories Audit and Certification Checklist (TRAC) is available at http://www.crl.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/pages/trac_0.pdf.
• ……………..ISO 16363 self assessment template is available at www.iso16363.org.
• ……………..ISO 16363 is still the standard and defines a recommended practice for assessing the trustworthiness of digital repositories.
• ……………..Web ARChive file format (WARC) is still being used for web harvesting and digital preservation (ISO Standard).
• ……………..DuraCloud (with a combination of DSpace and Fedora) an open source platform and managed service that provides on-demand storage and services for digital content in the cloud.
• ……………..ACE (Auditing Control Environment) is being used for digital preservation.
• ……………..Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe System (LOCKSS) is still being used. The system is open source and allows development and support for the preservation of and access to web based collections.
• ……………..Archivematica (open source) is a digital preservation system designed to maintain standards-based, long-term access to digital content.
• ……………..Commercial products being used included Tessella SDB, Preservica, and OCLC Digital Archive.
• ……………..Some states are restricting access to blue prints and building plans for security reasons.