New ‘Digital Strong Room’ For Jersey

A new ‘strong room’ is being created to preserve digital records at Jersey Archive.

It will cost £18,500 a year and will be in place by the end of 2018.

Among the information being safeguarded will be Royal Court judgements and the Care Inquiry archive.

Director Linda Romeril explains why doing this is so important.

“A lot of records are coming into the archive now that are born digital, so they’ve only ever existed in a digital format. The information is still absolutely vital and a really important part of Jersey’s history.

“So it’s really important that we look after those records, just like we would look after the physical records so they can accessed in 100, 200, 300 years time.”

The system is being implemented by Arkivum Perpetua, specifically for the heritage sector.

Jersey Archive holds the complete public record of the States, a photo archive of around 1.5 million images and digitised artefacts, such as registration cards from the Occupation.

Paul Keogh from Arkivum says the system will keep records safe and secure.

“Archives, such as Jersey Heritage, now handle an array of formats – from images, videos and audio material, to documents such as PDFs.

“They have to test for authenticity, manage format obsolescence, and above all, keep all their digital assets secure.

“With Arkivum Perpetua, Jersey Heritage can now reassure the organisations and individuals contributing to the archive that their irreplaceable materials are in safe hands.”