Paper presented at the 12th International Conference on Digital Preservation, November 2-6, 2015. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Abstract: The National Library of France (BnF) has recently implemented a new module for its Scalable Preservation and Archiving Repository (SPAR) to set up preservation strategies based on formats, agents, workflows, tools and tests, and managed as reference packages in the Archive. This module aims to fulfill an objective: for SPAR to be fully self-documented. Formats, agents and workflows are formally described and preserved along with the Information packages in which such elements are involved. Although this was a feature that was included from the beginnings of SPAR, the new Preservation Planning module aims to provide a tool that can more easily build these reference packages and that will more closely involve domain experts and the IT department in the processes of preservation planning. But the main innovation lies in the documentation of decisions that directed their selection as standards in SPAR: test data are now preserved as a new kind of reference package.

1. Experiment, Document & Decide
a Collaborative Approach to
Preservation Planning at the BnF
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2. 2
The BnF
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3. 3
Collections
14M books
30M prints and photographs
250,000 manuscripts
+ 900,000 sound documents, 50,000 multimedia
documents
French Web Legal Deposit (billions of files)
And also music scores, medals and coins, maps, globes,
theater objects…
1M readers per year
300,000 exhibition visitors
Budget : 250 M€
Staff : 2 200 full-time equivalent
Some facts
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4. Digital archiving at BnF
SPAR - Infrastructure
SPAR - Realization
Ingest
SPAR
Storage Abstraction Service (SAS)
Administration
Data management
Storage
Access
Preservation planning
Productionapplications
Disseminationapplications
Preservation
digitization
…
wayback
WEB Archiving
…
Records
Management
Gallica (digital library)
Records
Management
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5. Different tracks
• To deal with data variability and heterogeneity, tracks are
defined.
• These are built on the relation between digital objects and the
archival system, independently of any given organization:
– Heritage digitization;
– Audiovisual legal deposit;
– Negotiated legal deposit (e-books, large posters…);
– Automatic legal deposit (surface Web);
– Administrative production;
– Third party archiving;
– Acquisition / Donation;
+ reference track
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6. SPAR data model: Reference packages
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AIP DIPSIP
Information
packageChannel
Track
Event
AgentManifest Data Object
Format
is described by
is member of
implies
has event
format
is described in
SLA
is applicable for

7. SPAR milestones
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8. Functions of the Preservation Planning OAIS
entity
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9. 9IPRES - November 3rd, 2015
SPAR implementation of the Preservation
Planning OAIS Entity

10. Use case: introducing a new format
Heritage Digitization:
– tests
– new format in existing channels
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11. Preservation Planning GUI - Format
11SPAR

12. Use case: from MS Office to PDF
• Transforming Office Documents to PDF
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13. Preservation Planning GUI - Agent
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14. Preservation Planning GUI - Tests
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15. People involved in preservation planning
ADMINISTRATOR PRESERVATION
EXPERT
DEVELOPER
COLLECTION
MANAGER
RISKS & EMERGENCY
PLAN
TRACK MANAGER
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16. A collaborative approach
• Skills are spread around the library and they
are seldom
• First use in real life: positive feedback (though
improvements needed)
• More visibility, not only admins have access to
the system settings
• Providing a practical and operational
framework
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17. Thank you for your attention!
Any question?
bertrand.caron@bnf.fr
stephane.reecht@bnf.fr
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18. Reference package: Channel
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Information
package
FIL_REF_CHANNEL FIL_REF
SLA in machine
actionable format
(XML transformed
in RDF
within SPAR)
Schematron to
validate
specific METS profile
of the channel
Human readable
documentation

19. Reference package: Format
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Information
package
FIL_REF_FORMAT FIL_REF
Format description
in machine actionable
format
(XML transformed
in RDF
within SPAR)
Machine actionable
file (e.g. to validate
like a XSD schema)
Human readable
documentation
(standard or
specifications)orFormat
sample
With all these
descriptions, the
system has its own
format registry.

20. Reference package: Agent
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Information
package
FIL_REF_AGENT FIL_REF
Human readable
documentationorTool
Source code
Agent description
in machine actionable
format
(XML transformed
in RDF
within SPAR)
SPAR is auto-documented
and contains all information
about software environment
to use each format

21. Reference package: Channel
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• 3 SLAs: Ingest, Preservation, Access
• Formalize in XML the ways of managing the
packages
• Those 3 SLAs are recorded in a reference
package that describes the channel
SLA-I.xml, SLA-P.xml, SLA-A.xml
Mets.xml
Contract.pdf

22. Reference package: Format
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Mets.xml: manifest
T000001.jp2: sample
format.xml: machine readable
description
format.txt: human description

23. Channel reference package elaboration
sequence
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24. • autres captures d’écran
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