Preservation and Digital Archiving

"The single most useful thing you can do to ensure the long-term preservation of your data is to plan for it to be re-used. Imagining it being reused by someone else who has never met you and who never will meet you, will cause you to approach the creation and design of your data in a new light. Moreover, studies show that re-use of data is the single surest way of maintaining the integrity of data and tracking errors and problems with it. In short, always plan for re-use" Prof. Julian Richards, Director ADS.

One of the core activities of the Archaeology Data Service is the long term digital archiving of the data that has been entrusted to us. We follow the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) reference model and also have several internal policies and procedures that guide and inform our archiving work in order to ensure that the data in our care is managed in an appropriate and consistent way.

ADS Preservation Policy (PDF)
ADS Repository Operations (PDF)
ADS Ingest Manual (PDF)
Copyright Infringement Policy (case study)
Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System (PDF)

The ADS was awarded the Data Seal of Approval (DSA) in March 2011. This demonstrates the robustness and sustainability of our archival processes. Further information about the DSA as well as our self-assessment with descriptions of how we meet each of it's 16 guidelines can be found on the Data Seal of Approval website . An article 'ADS and the Data Seal of Approval – case study for the DCC' describing how and why we made the DSA application is available from the Digitial Curation Centre and would be useful reading for any other archive thinking of undertaking this process.

The ADS is an associate member of the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) .