Long-term archiving

ORTOLANG will provide a long-term archiving service in partnership with the TGIR Huma-Num research infrastructure. This service will be based on the skills of the National Computing Center for Higher Education (CINES), a French public sector data centre whose governmental mission is to offer long-term archiving to its selected partners.

The CINES works in compliance with the Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS) which enables ORTOLANG to preserve producers’ digital data. A list of the compatible formats for long-term archiving is available and should be consulted before depositing data at CINES. ORTOLANG considers it is up to data producers to comply with the compatible formats and will therefore not convert any data itself. A file format needs to have been published, widely used and standardized to be compatible.

To best prepare data for archiving by the CINES, ORTOLANG suggests the following publication workflow:

1. The producer deposits data on ORTOLANG
2. The producer specifies that s/he requires long-term archiving for this data via the graphic interface
3. The data will then be analysed using CINES tools to make sure they are provided in one of the right archiving formats. The result of this check will be attached to each file as metadata so that the producer can check the compatibility of her/his data.
4. The data involved will be collected together and sent to the CINES for archiving.
5. In return, CINES will provide an ARK (Archival Resource Key) identifier for each archived file.
6. The ARK identifier will be saved in the ORTOLANG database to enable users to access the data at any time.
7. At the end of the process, the producer will be informed whether her/his data has been properly archived.

The CINES will convert the files into a format considered to be perennial.

All data compatible with the archiving formats accepted by the CINES will be eligible for long-term archiving.