British Library

Issue 45

Archiving & Preservation

Link:

www.bl.uk/digital-preservation/strategy

Summary:

National institution; legal deposit library.

Format types:

When published both print and digital, print is preferred. Also accept CD ROM. No clear outline of formats is provided on the website, but a list of out-of-scope documents is, which specifies they do not accept “works produced in formats the Libraries do not have the capability to process”. See Joint Policy on Out of Scope Materials, 2014.

Third-party content support:

Archives a range of media, including web archiving.

Preservation:

Storage is provided at four nodes: the British Library, Boston Spa; the British Library, London; the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh; the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth. Each node stores a full copy of all the materials held within the system. The nodes communicate with each other across a secure network, with automated routines for self‐checking, replication and repair. If a digital file stored in one of the nodes becomes corrupted or lost, it is automatically restored from one of the other nodes. Each node also uses a technical arrangement by which files are copied and stored on two or more physical disks, with self‐checking and replication between the disks. These measures ensure that the system is extremely resilient and capable of preserving content for many years. The legal deposit libraries use web crawling software wherever possible, especially when collecting for the UK Web Archive. Web crawling is an automated process used to collect content and metadata that is available without access restriction on the open web. Crawled websites and material are preserved in the legal deposit libraries’ web archive. We may also use manual or other methods of downloading content and metadata when necessary.

Costs: N/A.