Our Story: Danish National Archive
Small countries such as Denmark find it costly to develop the preservation tools that are required for the sustainability of archived information. In order to improve knowledge about the preservation of digital data, co-operation across nations can lead to common standards that benefit all.
The Danish National Archives has over 40 years of preserving databases and has preserved more than 4400 databases from governmental and public institutions. At the current rate we ingest 220 databases per year, and this year we will ingest 40+ terabyte of data, all of which complies with our preservation format SIARD-DK.
By participating in the E-ARK project, the Danish National Archive has had the opportunity to collaborate with other partners and draw on a wider pool of expertise and technologies to develop and test new ideas. There are many benefits from this collaboration. One of which has been the opportunity for the Danish National Archive to develop a migration tool that connects to live databases and migrates to preservation format. A key contribution of Danish National Archives has been to ensure that scalability issues and practical issues have been implemented in the E-ARK specifications and E-ARK tools.
One aim of the E-ARK project is to resolve a technical and costly gap by providing tools and standards that will be able to migrate data from live milieus to preservation format. Furthermore, the E-ARK project will provide tools that the Danish National Archive can use when users need access to the data and knowledge which we have preserved. The tools developed under the E-ARK project will have the most impact for the Danish National Archive and will improve daily operations. However, the knowledge and insights gained will also be very significant.
