In praise of Quick View Plus

I just wanted to sing the praises of a great little bit of software that we have been using here to help us recover old files.

Quick View Plus is a simple tool for viewing lots of different file formats. As we have been working through boxes of old floppy disks we have found many files that we can read in modern software that we have installed on our PCs (old versions of Word Perfect for example) but many more that we can not view. Rather than purchasing and installing lots of different bits of software to read all of our obsolete Paradox databases and Microsoft Works spreadsheets from the 1990's it has proved to be far more efficient just to purchase a single copy of Quick View Plus Standard Edition. This software allows you to view the contents of over 300 different file formats (often with many different versions of each format) and is a really useful tool for anyone who needs to view or extract content from a wide range of file formats. Though it is purely a tool for viewing files (rather than migrating files), it does allow the contents of the files to be copied and then pasted into a different application.

Of one of the boxes of floppy disks from the office we had been looking at as part of our digital rescue warm-up mission, it was decided that about 300 files were worthy of rescue. The range of formats of these files (dating from between 1990 and 2004) are shown in the graph below.



File identification was carried out using Droid from the National Archives (another great little tool!). The files listed as 'Not recognised' included File Maker Pro and others with a qic extension which appeared to be some sort of backup file. We have shared some of these unrecognised formats with the Droid and Pronom team so that they can incorporate them into future versions where appropriate.

Anyway, the good news is that Quick View Plus was successful at viewing pretty much all of the files that we needed to rescue and once viewed they could be copied and saved into a modern MS Office format suitable for current staff to view and use. The next step is to find appropriate homes for the material we have rescued. What we do not want to do is copy them back on to a different sort of portable media that will become obsolete or corrupt again in another 20 years time!




Jenny Mitcham, Digital Archivist

The Atlas of Digital Damages

One of our 'dead'!

Last week I attended a Digital Preservation Coalition day of action on collaborative approaches to digital archiving (and file format identification in particular) jokingly subtitled 'Bring out your Dead'.

Our current work has certainly uncovered some digital media and files that could be described as 'dead' and though I didn't really have cause to bring them out on the day, one of the key things that was reinforced by many of the speakers on the day was the importance of collaboration.

Digital archiving is complex and evolving field and we can not hope to solve all of the problems we are faced with alone. Although sometimes we may struggle to find the time to actively engage with collaboration initiatives, the importance of making time to do so was highlighted and at the end of the workshop we were asked to commit to at least one of the collaborative initiatives neatly summarised on the OPF wiki page Support your digital preservation community.

Only a small step I know, but I decided that something we could easily contribute to was the Atlas of Digital Damages. This is a group on Flickr with a remit to collect "visual examples of digital preservation challenges, failed renderings, encoding damage, corrupt data...". These images all tell a story and visually highlight and describe preservation issues that many of us will face. I hope to use some of these images to illustrate future presentations.

So, I have re-registered with Flickr (it has been a long time!) and uploaded my first picture (see above). It is that easy! I feel the compact disc photographed represents a very real digital preservation challenge! I was relieved to be told today that we do hold the data on this corrupt CD (burnt less than 6 years ago) elsewhere in the office, so in this case at least, the level of digital damage is minimal.

Jenny Mitcham, Digital Archivist

CDs versus floppies

The digital rescue mission continues...

Here are a few words from James who is in the middle of his internship on this project and has been moving his focus away from floppy disks and on to CDs within the office:

Floppy disks - more robust than we expected!

"I am finding it very enjoyable rifling through collections of CDs and floppy disks
to try and discover what they contain, what is recoverable, what has duplicates saved elsewhere and what is important. Something that has been a big surprise to me, and I have found really interesting, was to discover that the floppy disks appear to have a greater lifespan than the CDs that superseded them. Out of the 97 floppy disks I’ve been through (most of these were from the 1990s) only one is completely corrupt. This is in contrast to the 62 CDs I have been working with (mostly from the 2000s) of which there were 4 entirely corrupt
disks. It just seems odd that the older technology outlasts the more modern."

So in our sample, the floppies have a 1% disk corruption rate whereas for the CDs it is somewhere around 6.5%. Is this typical? It will be interesting to see if this pattern continues as we move on to digital material in the strongrooms.

There is an interesting analogy from my colleagues who work on the conservation of analogue material within the archive. Apparently, the same is true of paper. Old paper is generally of better quality thus in a better state of physical preservation than more modern paper. I love it when my work on digital material finds parallels in the traditional archival experiences.

It just goes to show, they don't make things like they used to!

Jenny Mitcham, Digital Archivist

Digital Rescue Mission: Operation Warm-up

Some of the floppy disks we have been looking at

My digital archiving intern has started work. His mission is to rescue digital media from the strongroom and prepare it for inclusion into the digital archive.

The first stage of this work has been to search our accessions database and catalogues for any mention of digital media. James has had the rather tedious job of running keyword searches over our finding aids in order to create a list of the archives that contain digital media. This list is pretty much complete now and next week we will start to pull material out of the strongrooms and see what we actually have.

However, in preparation for working with the real archives, we have also been doing a bit of a warm-up exercise on some old digital media found tucked away in people's offices. As well as being a means to hone our skills in this area, and test tools and workflows, this is also a very useful exercise in its own right. As a long-established organisation that has existed over a period of many technological changes, it is not surprising that we have a variety of different digital storage solutions for our administrative files. We are currently establishing a more cohesive strategy for storing all of our own digital material and part of this process is to ensure that any digital files that are important to us are stored in a logical location on a server and regularly backed up.

In the past floppy disks were regularly used to back up files and transfer files between computers. Some of these floppy disks still exist (and most are still readable) so James is currently working through them, virus checking them, running DROID to find out the file formats and opening the files to look at the content. He is creating a list from which we can highlight anything that is important and unique and in need of rescue. Many will be back-ups or earlier versions of things we already have on our shared filestore. Many of the unique files will be of limited value. However, we are expecting there will be other files that will be more interesting, and will be useful in showing the history and development of our organisation.

In terms of file formats, James is finding a lot of Microsoft Word 97-2003, WordPerfect 6.0 and PDF 1.4 files. No major problems with being able to read these at the moment so that is encouraging. A couple of old databases have emerged in Paradox and an early version of Microsoft Access which we are struggling to open. We expect to find earlier data going back to the 1990's as James works through the stratigraphy of the pile of disks on his desk. What better job for a recent archaeology graduate!

After the floppy disks have been tackled we may decide to move on to the CDs in the office. Far more numerous but it could be argued they are equally vulnerable.








Jenny Mitcham, Digital Archivist

The digital rescue mission begins!

What a great start to the new year to have the opportunity to begin the digital rescue mission that I blogged about back in September!

On Monday next week an intern is starting work here, and between us we have 8 weeks to 'rescue' digital content from the Borthwick Institute's strongrooms.

The first job that I have made a start on is to run various searches on our databases and pick the brains of staff here to create a list of collections that contain digital media. Though digital media has not been a part of our collection policy until recently, occasional CDs, DVDs and floppy disks have been given to us alongside more traditional analogue deposits. With no digital archiving strategy in place for dealing with these items, the digital media have been stored in the strongrooms awaiting the appointment of a digital archivist (that's where I come in). It is a priority for me to gain some control over this material. Locating the material and getting it securely stored and backed up on a server is the first step - some of the finer details about what happens next will be formulated as the project progresses.

On my noticeboard, squeezed between the family photos and Christmas cards (which I really should take down) there is a copy of a the table from 'NDSA Levels of Digital Preservation'. I'm finding this really helpful. When faced with a big task it is useful to break it down into smaller chunks rather than being overwhelmed by the whole. I am first of all focusing on 'Level One (Protect your Data)' and from that sound base can work my way to Level Two and beyond. Level One sets out the foundations of digital preservation. It is all very basic stuff but absolutely essential that this is carried out before anything else happens. There is no point attempting to carry out file migrations for example until you know your data is securely stored.

I'll be blogging more about progress on this over the next couple of months.

Jenny Mitcham, Digital Archivist

DPC’s Digital Preservation Awards 2012

I was really pleased to be able to attend the Digital Preservation Awards at the Wellcome Collection in London last night. In it's 10th year, the DPC is celebrating in style with three separate awards:

1. The DPC Decennial Award for an outstanding contribution to digital preservation
2. The DPC Award for Teaching and Communications
3. The DPC Award for Research and Innovation

Participants were encouraged by the chair of the ceremony Richard Ovenden to switch on their mobiles and tweet as the results of each category were announced. The excitement in the room was almost tangible!

I was very pleased and not at all surprised to see that the Digital Preservation Training Programme (DPTP) was the winner of the award for Teaching and Communications. DPTP was quite ground-breaking when it ran its first residential course in digital preservation back in 2005. I was there to help deliver presentations and case studies on the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) and preservation metadata and how we made digital preservation work in practice at the Archaeology Data Service. DPTP has gone from strength to strength ever since and has run courses all over the UK. A worthy winner!

Most exciting of all was the Decennial Award for an outstanding contribution to digital preservation. I couldn't be more happy to see my ex-colleagues at the Archaeology Data Service pick up this most prestigious of awards. The award was a great honour given the exceptionally high standard of the other candidates nominated in this category. An impressive accolade awarded for the ADS's excellent track record of research and innovation in digital preservation over the last ten years and it's innovative business model. I am very pleased to be able to say that I was a part of this.

Congratulations also go to the excellent PLANETS project which won the award for Research and Innovation.

A big thank-you to William and Carol at the DPC and our hosts at the Wellcome Collection for making the event a night to remember.

Jenny Mitcham, Digital Archivist

The first accession!

I am pleased to report that last week I accessioned the first files into the digital archive here at the Borthwick Institute!

This may sound like a rather grand claim at the moment. I will admit that we do not have a 'digital archive' infrastructure in place yet and we are still in the very early stages of considering how best to treat digital material. 'Accessioning' of digital data is not the formal process that I would like it to be, but I am setting up some basic procedures to tide us over until a more cohesive system of managing digital archives alongside their analogue friends and relations is established.

It has been said many times that with digital preservation there is no point waiting for the perfect solution because this may be a long time coming. If we keep on waiting, the problem will get bigger and crucially, data loss may occur ...so this is the methodology I have established so far.

Once I have checked that the media is readable and free from viruses, my first priority is to ensure that new digital data deposited with us is copied on to our digital archive server storage space (and securely backed up). This is of utmost importance and is the first step to ensuring longevity of digital data. If data exists only on one device (whether it is a floppy disc, a DVD or a hard drive) we can not assume it will still be readable or usable next time we need to access it. Ensuring we have more than one copy of the digital data is a key step towards preserving that data.

The next step is to find out exactly what we have. File identification and characterisation tools such as DROID are really helpful here. Running DROID over the files will produce a list of technical metadata about each file. This will include the file name and file size alongside a checksum (we can use this over time to check that a file hasn’t corrupted or been accidentally altered). DROID also tries to identify the exact file type and version of your files. Very useful information as this can provide a starting point for making decisions about future file migrations.

It is also important to maintain a record of the digital deposit process and the provenance of the data. Keeping copies of relevant correspondence about the process and any other documentation submitted which describes the data is crucial as it is hard to recreate this if not captured at the time of deposit.

This is the just the starting point for me - the first steps towards preserving the material. However, the small steps we can take now should ensure that the files can be more easily incorporated into a fuller digital archiving solution in the future.

Jenny Mitcham, Digital Archivist