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| Digital
Archives Solutions |
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Business Process Management (BPM) Server
A rapidly increasing amount of business
records, documents, publications, cultural artifacts, and
science research data is created and stored in digital form
only. This poses a great challenge to archival institutions
that are in charge of preserving and managing such content
for the long-term, for example public national and states
archives, libraries, and scientific data centers:
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Obsolescence in technology can
render digital data incomprehensible and unreadable after
a few years due to dependencies on IT environments that
have disappeared.
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Heterogeneity (data formats, metadata
models, provenance) of acquired digital content makes
it very difficult for archives to build integrated, collectively
manageable holdings.
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Rapid change in business requirements
of interfacing with customers (ingest, access, dissemination)
is difficult to reconcile with long-term stability of
archival content.
Digital Archives challenges
Digital Archives have to provide for sustained,
long-term preservation of authenticity, integrity, usability
and intelligibility of a continuously increasing amount of
digital content that is acquired from a multitude of disparate
sources. This makes it inevitable to obtain sufficient control
of the data right from the start when the archives accepts
responsibility. Obtaining sufficient control, however, is
a complex, labor-intensive and high-risk task. It decides
on long-term success, and inattentiveness will later lead
to uncontrollable costs and loss of data.
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Data and metadata is received in multiple
formats and must be validated, transformed and integrated
into standard formats and models of the archives' collective
holdings.
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Manual processes to assimilate the information
are labor-intensive, error-prone, poorly traceable,
and difficult to monitor.
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Technical complexity of ingest workflows
must be hidden from business users without IT skills,
or otherwise will impede their work, e.g. in archival
appraisal and description.
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Metadata and data must be seamlessly handed
over to disparate applications such as catalog and finding-aid
databases, storage facilities, and end-user access systems.
Adeptia BPM solutions for Digital
Archives
Aiming at the above challenges, Adeptia has
developed focused functionality and expertise to automate
and control all parts of ingest processes in Digital Archives,
and to integrate them with disparate systems. Adeptia
BPM Server solutions for Digital Archives follow the Open
Archival Information System Reference Model ( OAIS,
International Standard ISO 14721:2003). In particular, they
enable archival institutions to design, implement, operate
and manage effective Producer-Archive Interfaces according
to the OAIS supplementary standard PAIMAS (Producer-Archive Interface Methodology Abstract Standard,
ISO 20652:2006).
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Complete, visually designed ingest processes,
including all data processing and human workflow tasks,
are executed and monitored by a server-side process machine
and a data repository that prevent data from being dispersed
across local user workstations.
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Human workflow tasks in an ingest process
are executed via a normal Web browser. They are dynamically
assigned to the required human users when needed, for
example to handle errors and exceptions, make decisions,
or review, appraise and enter data.
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Dozens of ingest processes can run independently,
while a visual System Monitor shows their detailed status,
and each user has a Human Task Manager that shows his
or hers pending human tasks with assigned priorities,
due dates, and state of work.
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Definition and management of multiple
submission interfaces that automatically receive and validate
data according to producer-specific transfer protocols
and data formats.
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Automatic mapping, rule-based transformation
and multi-source aggregation of XML and non-XML metadata
from producer-specific formats into internal formats of
the archives, including support for standards like, for
example, PREMIS, EAD, MARC21, METS.
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Seamless integration of ingest processes
with the popular tool JHOVE for automatic extraction of
technical metadata and validation of file formats.
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Platform-agnostic UUID or URN identifiers
are used to bind metadata and data objects in stand-alone
Archival Information Packages that are stored in generic
storage systems. Specific subsets of the full metadata
are created and exported into the archives' catalog and
description systems using their proprietary formats and
interfaces.
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At the end of each ingest process execution,
a detailed report is created for long-term documentation
and traceability. Furthermore, all logging information
remains online in a database for long-term business statistics
and performance monitoring.
Benefits & advantages of an Adeptia
BPM solution
With BPM
Server Adeptia introduces proven business process management
technology into Digital Archives. It enables implementation
of accurate, predictable and manageable ingest processes,
and provides high agility in adapting them to rapidly changing
business needs.
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Dramatic improvement of accuracy, data
quality, stability and TCO in digital archives.
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'Configure, not code' approach does
not require software development to implement and modify
ingest processes, thus reduces project costs and times.
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Fully Web-based user interface enables
effortless integration of human users and workplaces,
no matter where they are.
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Full process management life cycle
management — design, implement, execute, monitor,
optimize — is included in a comprehensive stand-alone
product.
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Relies on open industry standards and
uses pre-built, already solution-proven service components
that are successfully deployed in diverse industries.
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Service-oriented, highly scalable and
fully Java-based architecture that allows solutions
to grow seamlessly with changing business needs and
IT environments.
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