In June 2022 the IT Department established a team dedicated to preserving the National Library’s digital collection. This team handles all kinds of digital content, whether it’s digitized from physical sources or born digital. This includes media types like web pages, text documents, images, audio, and moving images.

The team’s responsibilities involve ingesting, checking, storing, preserving, and providing access to high-quality digital files. We work closely with several other specialized media teams in the library. In addition we are members of the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC).

Organisation

The Digital Preservation team consist of 7 members:

Group photo of the Digital Preservation team members. Back, left to right: Johannes Karlsen, Siarhei Kulakou, Torbjørn Pedersen, Thomas Edvardsen. Front, left to right: Daniel Aaron Salwerowicz, Vigdis Marie Sørensen, Trond Teigen

Back, left to right: Johannes Karlsen, Siarhei Kulakou, Torbjørn Pedersen, Thomas Edvardsen.
Front, left to right: Daniel Aaron Salwerowicz, Vigdis Marie Sørensen, Trond Teigen

This team reports to a committee of leaders responsible for this area in the National Library. The members are:

  • IT Director (Product owner)
  • Director of Digitalizing Cultural Heritage
  • Head of Metadata Standards Development Section
  • Head of IT Platform Section

The National Library’s digital collection in numbers

  • Over 2 billion files
  • More than 90 different file formats
  • 15 Petabytes of data (that’s 15,000 Terabytes!) stored in 3 copies
  • The largest single file is 2.5 Terabytes
  • Daily ingest of new material averages over 4 Terabytes

Data volume by type

  • Video and television: 22%
  • Film: 21%
  • Newspapers: 19%
  • Web Archive: 16%
  • Radio and audio: 12%
  • Books: 8%
  • Photos: 2%

Technology choices used when working with digital preservation