The British Library and the National Archives of Malaysia have both selected Tessella’s Safety Deposit Box technology as key components of their digital archiving solutions. The technology has been designed to help memory institutions (including libraries and archives), who are already skilled at preserving paper material, to face the problems posed by preserving material stored in digital formats.

Tessella has developed the Safety Deposit Box (SDB) in partnership with The National Archives of the UK (TNA), to help confront the problem of digital preservation. The software, which has already been in use at TNA for four years, as the basis of their award-winning Digital Archive system, is currently being significantly enhanced as part of TNA’s Seamless Flow programme.

Dr Robert Sharpe, Tessella’s Head of Digital Archiving Solutions commented: “As anyone who has faced the problems of trying to read digital material written over ten years old (or even more recent material stored on a floppy disc) can testify, such material is hard to preserve owing to the short lifetime of formats, software, operating systems and storage media”.

Dr Sharpe continued: “Tessella’s solutions for the British Library and the National Archives of Malaysia are based on our tried and tested, award-winning Safety Deposit Box functionality, which is currently undergoing significant enhancements including the addition of cutting-edge digital preservation features. We are looking forward to working with more institutions to be able to apply this technology in a new context, which will provide further invaluable experience in this new and emerging field.”

Following a full EU procurement, the British Library chose Tessella’s SDB-based solution to supply the ingest module to their on-going Digital Object Management (DOM) programme. This programme has already built a storage service that provides guaranteed, long-term storage of digital content across multiple sites. SDB will initially be targeted at e-journals but is designed to be capable of ingesting any content stream (eg snapshots of the entire UK web domain). It will enable scheduled and automated retrieval of content from publishers, and pass this to the storage service. Crucially, it will also validate and automatically characterize each article to assess its long-term preservation needs. In addition, SDB will store a description of this material and allow for its controlled retrieval and management.

Richard Masters, the DOM Programme Manager at the British Library said “The Library will be working with Tessella staff over the next few months to implement the features of the Safety Deposit Box and to specify and develop further functions. Together we will be developing a key part of the DOM programme which will eventually allow us to offer services to the public based on our ever-increasing volume of digital materials and our role as one of the world’s leading libraries”.

The National Archives of Malaysia have also selected SDB as the basis for their Digital Archive Management System in conjunction with a record management system to be provided by local suppliers VersaPAC and Solsis. Tessella will be rolling the system out in two phases during 2007.

Pn Hajah Mahfuzah binti Yusof, Managing Director of the Electronic Records And Information Technology Management, National Archives Malaysia commented: “This is a crucial and exciting time for archives around the world. We need to share and build on each other’s experience in order to solve the new preservation challenges. We are excited to reap the benefit of previous work and plan to add to the international expertise through our experiences and by, for example, hosting next year’s International Congress on Archives, a four-yearly event, in Kuala Lumpur”.

Kevin Gell, Managing Director of Tessella added: “Tessella is one of the few technology companies throughout the world to have invested in attempting to solve the problems of digital preservation. We believe that this is an area where the technology and solutions are beginning to mature but now need to be matched by practical experience. As a result, I am delighted that we are a part of these international collaborations and we look forward to learning from each other.”

-ends-

Notes to editors:

• For press enquiries or to arrange an interview with Tessella Support Services plc please contact Alison Smith, Marketing Manager on +44 (0) 1235 546609 or alison.smith@tessella.com

• Founded in 1980, Tessella specializes in the application of innovative solutions to scientific, technical and engineering problems, and its offices within the UK, US and the Netherlands have built long-term relationships with organizations at the leading edge of the scientific and engineering world. Tessella is vendor independent and recommends ‘best of breed’ solutions, whether this involves custom software development or off-the-shelf solutions

• Tessella has over 20 years of proven expertise in the area of reliable and authentic long-term preservation of electronic records, both for government and scientific organizations. In recent years a number of mainly academic and government organizations have been at the cutting-edge of facing up to the digital preservation challenge, and Tessella has played a key role in a number of the most practical of these initiatives. For more information please visit: www.tessella.com

• The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and one of the world’s greatest research libraries. It provides world-class information services to the academic, business, research and scientific communities and offers unparalleled access to the world’s largest and most comprehensive research collection. The Library’s collection has developed over 250 years and exceeds 150 million separate items representing every age of written civilisation. It includes: books, journals, manuscripts, maps, stamps, music, patents, newspapers and sound recordings in all written and spoken languages. For further information visit www.bl.uk

• To find our more about the National Archives of Malaysia (Arkib Negara Malaysia) please visit: www.arkib.gov.my/english/main.htm

Tessella Contact details:

Tessella Support Services plc (Headquarters)
3 Vineyard Chambers
Abingdon
Oxfordshire
OX14 3PX
UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1235 555511, Fax: +44 (0) 1235 553301

Tessella also has UK offices in Burton upon Trent, Cambridge, Stevenage, Warrington and Winchester.

Tessella Support Services plc
Tauro Kantorencentrum
President Kennedylaan 19
2517JK Den Haag
The Netherlands
Tel/Fax: +31 (0) 70 354 2296

Tessella Inc
233 Needham Street, Suite 300
Newton, MA 02464
USA
Tel: (1) 617 454 1220, Fax: (1) 617 454 1001
Tessella Inc also has an office in Washington DC

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