The Arkive@unimi.it Project: building an LTDP infrastructure in a University.
federica zanardini
Arkive is the project for the creation of an infrastructure for long-term digital archiving of the Università degli Studi di Milano (UNIMI). The project design was based on OAIS and aims to provide an agnostic infrastructure (suitable for any type of digital object) for the long-term preservation of every digital object created by the UNIMI: data from research and - in the future - cultural assets, and administrative documents.
Arkive has a modular infrastructure:
1.            The storage system is based on Swarm Datacore cloud technology (S3). Despite it is usually addressed to cloud storage we chose to maintain the infrastructure on servers owned by university network. This way, there are better guarantees regarding data control from both security and data protection perspectives.
2.            The file system is virtualized through iRODS, making it possible to completely replace the storage (or its parts), both in terms of hardware and technologies, without impacting the archive's structure.
3.            The data management "engine" is Archivematica, which allows for the analysis, normalization, packaging, and movement of data into the repository. aTOM is the application currently serving as the archive's catalog/OPAC for its public part.
4.            User access is permitted in read/write mode only in the data transfer zone and can occur through various methods: client, web page, command line, etc. Some of these methods provide advanced functionalities for transferring large amounts of data.
This approach allows for the construction of solutions highly customized considering UNIMI structure and possible economic constraints and thus facilitating the long-term sustainability of this type of activity.
As the project developed, it became clear that Arkive is just one of several centralized facilities for research data management at UNIMI, alongside other platforms like Dataverse and Indaco (the UNIMI’s High-Performance Computing infrastructure). To overcome fragmentation, efforts are underway to integrate these services into a digital ecosystem for research data management.
The ultimate goal is to create a unified personal workspace environment that integrates all research-related services provided by the UNIMI.
approaches to preservation from document to data