Glossary of Key Terms and Concepts

Access Levels Scheme

Access Levels Scheme is a part of the Archive Access Plan and provides an overview of “who has access to what, and how” in the form of a table. Considering that different modes of access might need to be provided for different user groups, to material with varying permitted level of access, an Access Levels Scheme helps avoid confusion and errors.

Active and Passive Approach

A passive access approach would be an archive created with the main goal of long-term preservation of the material for historical, legal, or other reasons. However, most CSOs working with human rights violations archives will likely be taking the other route of an active approach to providing access, which is focused on facilitating and providing as wide access as possible to its users.

Active Maintenance

Active Maintenance of a digital archive is necessary both to keep the digital archive operational and also to ensure the long-term preservation, authenticity, and access to its digital content. If the format of the digital files becomes obsolete, or if the storage media fails or backup software is outdated and flawed, the archival digital content may be compromised, damaged, or lost altogether, along with all the work put into building and developing the digital archive. Active maintenance of a digital archive requires a systematic approach and regular performance of a set of actions that include monitoring and migration.

Archive Access Plan

guides both the decision-making and implementation related to access to the archival material. It provides balance between the goal of assuring as wide an access to an archive as possible and the responsibility to safeguard data and adhere to legal and ethical norms regarding data privacy, sensitivity, confidentiality, and copyrights. A well-considered and clear Archive Access Plan will help achieve that balance.

Collection

The most generic groups of material are often referred to as “collections,” or in strictly archival terms “fonds.” Each collection is divided into “series,” which can contain individual items as well as “subseries” and “folders” (sometimes also referred to as “files”), which are smaller, subordinated units of structure that then also contain individual items

Data Documentation

Data Documentation provides information about the context of our data, our digital archival content, often in a textual or other human-readable form. Data documentation supplements metadata and provides information that enables others to use the archival content. Given that data documentation is also “data about data,” it could also be seen as a specific type of metadata—one that provides context and is recorded in a human-friendly format.

Data Protection

Whether it relates to private, sensitive, confidential, or copyrighted data, Data Protection is the essence of our archive’s security planning. There are three main instruments, or actions an archive can take to protect its data: access control and management, redaction, and encryption.

Description of Archival Material

Description of Archival Material enables the archive’s proper preservation and guides future users by providing important contextual information. The content of an archive needs to be described in a way that will allow anyone to search for, locate, and access items in the collection, thereby enabling connections to be established between items, even from different groups. Simply put, without description, an archive would be more like simple storage in which it would eventually become impossible to find or manage content.

Digital Archive Security Plan

guides the devising of security procedures and their implementation. Such a plan should list and describe security-related obligations of the archive based on the material it contains, security-related functions the archive needs to perform, security-related actions that will be taken to ensure the functions are properly performed, and tools and technologies needed for its implementation.

Digital Archives

Digital Archives are archives that contain material in a digital form—including both born-digital items and digitized versions of originally physical material—stored on digital media and managed through digital tools. Just as in physical archives, the material in digital archives is organized, described, arranged, stored, preserved, safeguarded, and made accessible to users.

Digital Archiving

Digital Archiving is the process of creating, managing, and developing digital archives.

Digital Archiving Life Cycle Model

reflects the key characteristic of digital archiving, its circular and continual character, a cyclical process in which stages follow one after the other continuously, without an end point. The Life Cycle Model also draws attention to the need for taking actions and actively managing a digital archive throughout its life cycle. At the same time, the Model clearly presents the wide scope of responsibilities involved in the digital archiving process. Finally, the Life Cycle Model makes clear that decisions and actions in each phase affect what and how can be done in each subsequent stage and any new iteration of the process.

The Digital Archiving Life Cycle Model applied in this manual is developed to tailor to the specific needs and challenges of CSOs. It reflects some of the elements of the OAIS Reference model  and partly the structure of the DCC Curation Life Cycle Model. The OAIS Model is the most widely used model for digital archiving, while the DCC Life Cycle Model includes many of the considerations that also affect CSOs engaged in digital archiving.

Digital Archiving System

Digital Archiving System is a system of software and hardware components that consists of databases, software tools that manage databases, and storage media; it is the technological infrastructure of a digital archive. It defines the scope and limit of the archive’s functions and is instrumental in achieving its aim and goals. The main purpose of digital archiving is to ensure that the invaluable content we are preserving remains unchanged and accessible long into the future through an adequate and sustainable technological framework for the digital archive.

Digital File Name

Digital File Name of a digital archival item serves the very important role of descriptor of that particular item, which should contain information that allows us to identify what the item is and what it contains so we can locate it in the archive and properly manage and preserve it.

Digital Forensics

Digital Forensics in digital archiving refers to a set of software and application-based techniques that allow us to access and investigate digital archival material in relation to its authenticity, accountability, and accessibility. This is especially relevant for older data storage formats or when working with digital material of unclear origin and features, especially when a history of the material and “chain of custody” have not been established. Digital forensics allow us to, for example, extract relevant metadata, access content archived in outdated digital formats, establish a chain of custody, detect data manipulation and forgery, and identify issues with data privacy.

Digital Surrogates

Digital Surrogates are digital copies of physical archival items that are processed, preserved, and made accessible as digital archival objects. Digital surrogates can originate from different types of physical objects—documents, maps, video, artifacts, etc.—and can be stored in different digital formats.

Digitization

Digitization is a process of creating digital copies, or “surrogates” of original physical items. These digital copies are then processed as digital archival objects. Different types of physical objects can be digitized and then stored on a variety of media. They can, for example, include text, photographs, drawings, maps, video, audio, and other types of content, stored on paper, audio cassettes, VHS tapes, or any other physical or analogue storage media. The digital copies  could also include objects such as pieces of clothing, banners, personal belongings, etc. The type of material that needs to be digitized will determine the procedures, technologies, digital formats, and other elements of any concrete digitization process.

Digitization Workflow

Digitization Workflow is a plan or scheme that should include all digitization actions and operations—starting with review and preparation of physical items and workspace to the completion of the workflow through storing the created digital surrogates and making backup copies. Each digitization project will have its unique workflow, its specific sequence of actions and operations. Although specific actions and their sequences are tailored to each concrete project, we can identify the key elements required in any digitization workflow: preparation, process scheduling, digitization, quality control, post-processing, and storing and backup.

Disaster Recovery Plan

details how our data will be recovered or replaced in case of any major natural or human-caused failure, damage, theft, or malicious attack on our digital archival content or system. It is based on the existing backup arrangements that define the number of backup copies, their geographic location, and type of storage media used. The Disaster Recovery plan should provide instructions on which of our backup copies should be used in which disaster type circumstances and by which technological means to replace and recover the data.

Fixity

Fixity is a crucial element in long-term preservation of files, as well as in maintaining their integrity, authenticity and usability, refers to a state of being unchanged or permanent. In essence, fixity allows us to determine whether a file has changed over time or been altered or corrupted, and to track and record any such changes.

General Plan

General Plan of a digital archive is the first and crucial step in the process of its development. It lays out the reason and the method for the archive’s development by providing it with Guiding Principles as well as key decisions regarding the content, access, and major organizational, technological, and resource-related issues. The widely scoped, detailed, and advanced planning contained in the General Plan will help the organization navigate a wide array of challenges that need to be met in the later stages of the process of digital archive creation.

Guiding Principles

Guiding Principles of a digital archive summarize the reasoning behind its development. They state why an archive is needed, who will be using it and how, and what the expected benefits of its creation and development are. The Guiding Principles also address the required resources and technologies, legal and security-related responsibilities, and organizational matters.

Identification Inventory

Identification Inventory is the initial list of item groups we can identify in the material we wish to digitally archive. It is a table that lists the identified item groups and includes information about their type, format, size, amount, condition, location, and storage space or storage media. The Identification Inventory provides us with a clear overview of what source material we have, in what quantity, and in which shapes and forms.

Ingest

Ingest is the process of transferring digital items into the digital archive, during which the data, its metadata, and data documentation are stored and mutually linked within the Digital Archiving System. A set of preservation actions needs to be applied to the digital content in preparation for ingest, as well as after it has been finished. This includes scanning the digital files and backup copies with antivirus software and checking each file’s fixity, validity, and quality.

Maintenance Plan

Maintenance Plan is centered around the two main sets of maintenance actions. It lists, describes, and schedules the execution of maintenance monitoring and migration activities. The specific elements of the Maintenance Plan, such as time periods for regular checkups or concrete procedures, are defined in line with the needs of a given archive.

Master Files

Master Files are the best-quality files we produce through digitization and are intended to be preserved long term without loss of any essential features. The number of master files we will create will depend on the content of the originals and the planned uses of the digital surrogate. In addition to master files, we can also produce a number of secondary files, often called “access” or “service” files. These files are created from the master file and optimized for the intended use (e.g., for web or for research).

Metadata

Metadata refers to the descriptions of archival items. It is essential that relevant metadata is collected and attached to the digital archival items and stored in a structured form suitable for software processing. Without its attached metadata, digital archival material becomes meaningless and unusable, as we might be unable to find or identify it, understand what it is, its context, history, creator, or where it belongs in the archive. Digital archival items allow for a range of metadata to be collected, such as technical specifications of an archival digital file or information about its creation or any further digital action taken on it.

Migration of Data, Software, and Storage Media

Migration of Data, Software, and Storage Media is an essential component of active maintenance of a digital archive, as it allows us to preserve our archival data by migrating it to new formats, software, or storage media. Migration needs to be performed timely, in a systematic and carefully planned way, following clear rules and including the set of preservation actions—checkups of fixity, validity, and quality assurance—as a mandatory step both before and after the actual transfer of files.

Monitoring

Monitoring the digital archive software and improving it when needed ensures that it continues to meet our requirements and avoids it becoming obsolete. However, if the monitoring shows that a software can no longer be adapted, or that it is losing its support community, we will need to find a new appropriate software solution and migrate to it.

Monitoring and Preservation of archival data are actions that need to be performed on the digital archival data in the maintenance phase. This is in essence a continuation of the work done as part of the preparation of the digital material for ingest, including the backup of data, checkups of file formats, validity, fixity, and quality assurance. Monitoring and preservation actions need to be planned and performed regularly to check and amend any irregularities or errors.

Monitoring Storage Media is necessary to timely detect any errors or damage, as well as to prevent it from becoming obsolete or outdated. Over time, storage media can become unstable and unreliable and cause data corruption or loss. A rule of thumb for a safe preservation practice is for storage media to have a short life cycle, sometimes estimated at only three to five years. This means that after this period, we will need to find and obtain a new storage media and migrate our data to it.

Monitoring and Preservation

of archival data are actions that need to be performed on the digital archival data in the maintenance phase. This is in essence a continuation of the work done as part of the preparation of the digital material for ingest, including the backup of data, checkups of file formats, validity, fixity, and quality assurance. Monitoring and preservation actions need to be planned and performed regularly to check and amend any irregularities or errors.

Monitoring Storage Media

is necessary to timely detect any errors or damage, as well as to prevent it from becoming obsolete or outdated. Over time, storage media can become unstable and unreliable and cause data corruption or loss. A rule of thumb for a safe preservation practice is for storage media to have a short life cycle, sometimes estimated at only three to five years. This means that after this period, we will need to find and obtain a new storage media and migrate our data to it.

Optical Text Recognition (OCR) Software

allows for the creation of fully searchable documents from originally non-searchable image files. In essence, by running an OCR software on our scanned image of a document, we add a layer of text onto that image file so other software can read it, which makes the document fully searchable. This is essential for making human rights archives more accessible and visible, which is often a key purpose of their digitization.

Organization

of material for archiving involves introducing a certain logical and hierarchical order into it and thereby devising its structure. This is done on the level of item groups identified through the Inventory, using the organization’s knowledge and understanding of the material.

Outreach Strategy

of a digital archive describes its outreach goals and beneficiaries and a plan of activities. It can help achieve the activism goals of the archive—be it to inform, educate, raise awareness, or to seek truth, accountability or reparations—and also to make them more feasible and attainable. An archive with a bigger presence and impact in the community, with wider visibility and credibility, will be more likely to engage a range of actors necessary for its long-term sustainability. This includes expert staff, users, CSOs, and other partners, donors, teachers, students, universities, supporters, mentors, journalists, and others who can and need to contribute to a digital archive’s successful creation, maintenance, and development.

Resourcing and Fundraising Plan

should contain a thorough assessment of the overall resource needs related to the development of the digital archive, broken down by phases and activities. This should include an analysis of the more immediate short- and medium-term needs in developing the digital archive (i.e., which resources need to be obtained and within which time frame). Additional assessment should then be made of the resources the organization already has or can reasonably easily acquire. Based on these assessments, a realistic (time- and resources-wise) feasible plan should be made for securing the necessary resources and funds for developing a digital archive, both in terms of immediate steps and in the long term.

Selection and Prioritization

are archival procedures in which we make decisions on which groups of source materials should be preserved and for how long, and what the order of their preservation should be.

System Protection

is the first function of data security for a digital archive, because in order to protect the content—the data—we must first safeguard its repository. System protection includes safeguarding against system failures as well as protecting the Digital Archiving System from malicious acts of corruption or deletion.

Table of the Archive's Structure

is an advanced version of the identification Inventory, which reflects a hierarchical arrangement of series and collections of item groups. In the table of the archive's structure, the main units of analysis—described in terms of their size, format, amount, etc.—are not only individual item groups but also series and collections of these item groups, arranged in a hierarchical way. The table of the archive's structure hence contains information about our material, metadata (on the archive’s structure, grouping of files in collections, series, subseries, and folders), and additional descriptive and technical metadata that we selected to add into it. It is a necessary tool that allows proper archival processing of the source material and the archive’s organization and management.

Validation

of digital archival files is the process of establishing whether they are what we think they are. Through file validation, we check whether the format of a file is proper and correct—whether it is valid. In this way, we determine whether a file conforms to the specific file format specification or standards a specific file format such as .jpg, .doc., or TIFF must follow.