Digital preservation of knowledge in the public sector: a pre-ingest tool

Abstract

This paper describes the need for coordinating pre-ingest activities in digital preservation of archival records. As a result of the wide use of electronic records management systems (ERMS) in agencies, the focus is on several issues relating to the interaction of the agency’s ERMS and public repositories. This paper indicates the importance of using digital recordkeeping metadata to meet more precisely and at the same time semi-automatically the criteria set by memory institutions. The paper provides an overview of one prospective solution and describes the Estonian National Archives’ universal archiving module (UAM). A case study reports the use of the UAM in preserving the digital records of the Estonian Minister for Population and Ethnic Affairs. In this project, the preparation and transfer of archival records was divided into ten phases, starting from the description of the archival creator and ending with controlled transfer. The case study raises questions about how much recordkeeping metadata can be used in archival description and how the interaction of the agency’s ERMS and ingest by the archives could be more automated. The main issues (e.g. classification, metadata elements variations, mapping, and computer files conversions) encountered during that project are discussed. Findings show that the Open Archival Information System functional model’s ingest part should be reconceptualised to take into account preparatory work. Adding detailed metadata about the structure, context and relationships in the right place at the right time could get one step closer to digital codified knowledge archiving by creating synergies with various other digital repositories.