CINES, France
Introduction
In 2004, the French ministry for higher education and research (MENESR) assigned the CINES the mission to assure and certify the long term preservation of the French electronic PHD theses, as well as the digital publications of the Persée web portal.
These new projects lead the CINES to design and implement a generic solution for archiving digital and electronic documents. This solution is called PAC, acronym for “Plateforme d’Archivage au CINES” (CINES’s long term preservation platform)
This service is made available to the higher education and research community.
Design
The PAC system has been conceived as a set of three logical servers, as defined in the OAIS model (ISO 14721)
• A transfer server, where the archive producer can transfer his archives
• A storage server, where the archives are maintained
• An access server, where the producer and the authorized users can search, consult and retrieve the archives they need on line.
Overview
The PAC system is physically comprised of a hardware platform and its software layers.
The hardware platform currently includes the transfer server and the storage server ((DELL 1850, HDS 9570 storage unit and a Sun-Storagetek robot).
The software layer is a specific Java application. Its components have been developed in order to be compliant as soon as possible with the French “standard d’échanges de données pour l’archivage électronique”, developed by the DAF and DGME.
To identify and control the format or type of the archives, the PAC software includes JHOVE, the open source tool validation format developed by JSTOR and the Harvard University library.
The PAC system is designed, developed and managed by the CINES PAC department (four people).
Data flow between the CINES PAC department and the transferring agency
Before any transfer, the person responsible for the data exchange at the transferring agency has to contact the CINES, in order to map out a transfer protocol wherein will be specified the components of the whole archive project: volumetric ?, and file formats, conformance to archivist and IT security standards, access policy, transfer procedures, training programs for the staff of the transferring agency, etc…
Transfer
The transferring agency sends via network (SFTP) or on an offline media the information to transfer to the CINES PAC department. The transfer is located by the PAC application which performs several controls on the technical validity of the transferred data: formats, transfer structure…
If these controls are successful, the whole data transfer will be moved onto the storage server. The CINES PAC department will send back an acknowledge receipt of the submitted data to the transferring agency, which includes the unique and sustainable identifier of the archive transferred, and its main metadata. The identifier will allow the producer, the transferring agency and the CINES PAC department to find the archive they need in the future.
If the controls are unsuccessful, the digital object will be sent back to the transferring agency, so that it can modify the invalid elements.
Storage
The technological watching activities on storage environments, technologies and formats changes are performed by CINES.
Once the archives are in the PAC system, some maintenance operations can be performed: hardware controls, resets, media to media transfers, metadata controls…). The CINES PAC department doesn’t advise the producer and/or the transferring agency.
As for metadata updates or formats migrations, the CINES PAC department does advise the producer and/or the transferring agency.
Access
Communications will be done via the access server, in accordance to the OAIS standard and the French “standard d’échanges de données pour l’archivage”.
View the website for CINES