Preserving Digital Materials at the Smithsonian Institution Archives

Preserving Digital Materials at the Smithsonian Institution Archives
Lynda Schmitz Fuhrig
Electronic Records Archivist

Long-term digital preservation
More than 350 accessions contain electronic records in a variety of types including video, sound, images, databases, applications, websites, and text. These range from exhibit planning documents to unit handbooks to conference images.
One collection can contain thousands of files
Files arrive via removable media or file transfer
Goal is to ensure authenticity, integrity, and accessibility
Use best practices and accepted archival standards
Use formats that are open, lossless, and widely accepted. Proprietary formats, i.e., Microsoft Word and WordPerfect are problematic
Document all processing steps including virus scans and checksums
Perform full-level preservation as much as possible. Bit preservation at minimum for files we cannot convert or emulate.
Original files always maintained
Images and video are the top types in terms of size
Files kept on backed-up SIA servers, LTO tapes

CAD – Computer assisted design
A 2-D CAD drawing of an aerial view of the plan for the National Museum of the American Indian, 2003. View in AutoCAD proprietary software. SIA Accession 06-012

Same 2-D CAD drawing preserved as a PDF file. SIA Accession 06-012

Digital audio tapes
Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra
Lena Horne
Jazz Smithsonian Radio Broadcast with Lena Horne, “A Spanish Tinge,” 1997
All clips from SIA Accession 04-062
Introduction by David Baker, SMJO
“Manteca” performed by SMJO
Using DAT machine on loan from Smithsonian Folkways to conduct digital-to-digital transfers
Audio files being preserved as WAV/Broadcast WAV

Digital Video
“The Colbert Report – National Treasure: Portrait of Stephen” video
SIA Accession 10-111
NASM Udvar-Hazy Center preview video
Digital A/V files are huge and complex
Preservation tools and formats/codecs not as straightforward as other types.
We also have been digitizing our video histories

SI Websites and social media
Archiving SI websites since the late 1990s through a variety of methods
Now using open-source archival crawler Heritrix and other tools for social media captures

Email collections
Conducted three-year grant-funded project to study techniques for long-term preservation of email collections
Resulted in tools and procedures now in use
at SI Archives

Images
Roxie C. Laybourne, a pioneering forensic scientist at the Smithsonian Institution,
examines aircraft parts.
SIA Accession
04-086
Exhibition photograph from the National Portrait Gallery’s “Champions of American Sport.”
Original formats include GIF, JPG, EPS, TIF, PCD, etc.
Accepted preservation format currently is TIF.
Smithsonian American Art Museum staff paints the “Wall of Expression” in commemoration of Sept. 11, 2001.

Text documents
MS Word document
from SIA Accession 02-094
WordPerfect document
Rich Text
Format (RTF) document
Numerous word-processing files and spreadsheets
Preservation format is PDF/A or PDF

Preserving Digital Materials at the Smithsonian Institution Archives

by Smithsonian Institution Archives on Jun 22, 2011

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Preserving Digital Materials at the Smithsonian Institution Archives — Presentation Transcript