About National Archive

National Archive is a public institution of the State of Chile, created in 1927, under the Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage. It is an equivalent service to the US NARA (National Archives and Records Administration). Its functions are to gather and preserve the archives of the Chilean State departments and all documents and manuscripts related to national history. The greatest challenge for this organization is related to the organization, preservation and diffusion of this documentation.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

In history, physical documents have been preserved, where an attempt has made to give it the treatments to make them last over time. However, now the information is preserved in digital documents formats.

The objective of the Modernization of the Archivo Nacional project is to provide Archivo Nacional with a system to receive transfers of electronic documents generated by public institutions. Likewise, allow the preservation and conservation of documents, keeping them intact over time. In this way, they can be recovered and used for the purposes that are pertinent as part of the cultural heritage of Chile.

System Components

This project contemplates the implementation of three key components for the flow:

• Web Ingesta: Web application that receives documentation from public institutions, offering storage functionalities. For this, Tecnova worked on strengthening the protocol and security of file transfer from institutions to Intermediate Storage. Additionally, improvements are incorporated to facilitate the operation and new functionalities to support the transfer protocol.
• Intermediate Storage: Component that receives documentation and metadata, manages packages from Web Ingesta, according to the packaging format given by Bagit (specification selected by the Archivo Nacional). In addition, this component stores the information and repackages it to make it available for definitive storage in the Archivematica product, an opensource solution for digital preservation.
• Document Manager Product, WebService Integration: Component built to deliver them to public institutions, which allows them to manage and store their institutional documents with the metadata required by the Archivo Nacional. Via this component, through transfer agreements, it is possible to send document packages to Intermediate Storage.