Keeping Digital Archives Safe

Our e-preservation experts are developing standards and procedures to process digital material effectively and keep it secure and accessible into the future. They’ll be sharing this as part of the Gloucestershire Heritage Hub training programme, which will be offered at the new Heritage Hub venue and via the Heritage Hub website.

Solving the digital dilemma

Have you ever lost a digital document or wondered what to do with your ever-expanding array of digital photos?  If so, you're not alone!  But, rest assured, we're on the case at Gloucestershire Archives as digital records are just as important as traditional paper-based records.  Here's what we're doing to tackle the technical challenges they present and ensure the digital records in our collections are safe - also our plans to help others, like you, do the same.

As part of the 'For the Record' project, and using Heritage Lottery funding, we’ve been able to employ an archivist experienced in e-preservation, Claire Collins to lead on our digital preservation provision.  She has been working with our Heritage Lottery funded Skills for Future trainee, Ros Farr and four volunteers, including two students recruited from Gloucestershire University’s Degree Plus placement scheme.  And they’ve been using a software toolkit (‘SCAT’) to process digital records donated to Gloucestershire Archives. The toolkit, based on a low cost approach using open-source software, has been developed for us by one of our longstanding volunteers, Dr Viv Cothey, a nationally recognised expert in the field of e-preservation.  It allows us to create, store and access ‘packages’ of data safely over time – replicating, in a virtual world, much of what we do to look after our traditional collections.

We’ve also joined a network of English public archives services that are working in partnership with The National Archives on a six month project called Archives First. The project aims to ensure important records can be preserved and accessed beyond the life of a particular software system (15 years is a long time in this respect!) and some of the activity involves liaising with suppliers of major software systems used by local government. 

All of this is helping us shape the advice and support we're going to offer to local people.  We’ll be doing this through online and onsite training once the new Gloucestershire Heritage Hub website and venue are up and running.