Preserving the digital heritage: building a digital archive for UK Government records

摘要

Traditionally, readers have come to the public search rooms of the National Archives to view records written on paper and vellum, retrieved from repositories where the holdings are measured in terms of kilometres of shelving space. Yet within the next few years, the majority of users will be accessing our records over the internet, and we will be measuring our holdings in terabytes and petabytes. The impetus for this culture change comes both from the government departments whose records we preserve, and the researchers and members of the public who consult them. The government's 1999 White Paper, Modernising Government, set two important targets: first, that all new government records should be stored and retrieved electronically by 2004, and second, that all government services should be available online by 2005. A further incentive was provided by the 2000 Freedom of Information Act. Its requirement for all departments to respond to requests for information within 20 days can only realistically be met using electronic storage and retrieval methods. We have therefore been working with government departments to promote and advise on the use of the electronic records management systems which they will require within this new world. For some time, the National Archives has been making digitised copies of its most popular records available online; in the process it has developed a new set of internet customers. Within the past few years, delivery of these records over the internet has risen very dramatically compared to the number of visitors to our reading rooms. As more and more people have access to the internet, and even broadband becomes relatively common, we expect the demand for online access to continue to rise at a substantial rate. Storing and conserving our physical records (which currently occupy 176 kilometres of shelving) cost £14.3 million in 2002. As the proportion of new records accessioned in electronic form rises, we will be able to limit future growth in our physical storage costs. The true cost of storing and preserving electronic records is something which we are obviously keen to define, and we are currently developing a digital preservation cost model to this end. One area in which we can expect significant savings is the delivery of records to the public: retrieving a paper record for a reader costs about £6, but delivering the same record over the internet costs only 13p. In addition to the potential savings, there are also advantages in terms of conservation: an electronic copy of a record is not subject to wear and tear with repeated use. The future of public records is therefore electronic. These records are increasingly 'born-digital', with no paper analogue, and can only meaningfully be preserved in digital form. This represents both a challenge and an opportunity for the National Archives, and this paper will describe how we are responding.