Archivematica Quick-Start Guide¶

Using the sandbox¶

Artefactual maintains an Archivematica sandbox with the following credentials:

• Username: demo@example.com
• Password: demodemo

The sandbox is provided as an easy way to test the latest release of Archivematica. Please note that the website will automatically reset daily. Any packages that you create will not be permanently saved. Additionally, there may be more than one demo user logged in at the same time, so you may see changes made by others while you are using the software.

The demo site is publicly edited and unmoderated. For security, test transfers are limited to Artefactual’s provided sample data. Users who wish to test using their own data may download the Vagrant box (described below) and test locally.

Installing on a virtual machine using Vagrant¶

This guide will set up a new Oracle VirtualBox virtual machine with Archivematica installed on your computer. It works on most operating systems, including MacOS X, Linux, Windows, FreeBSD and others.

Minimum system requirements: 4GB RAM; 10GB disk space.

vagrant ssh

Review file formats¶

You do not need to consult the command for every job, but we do recommend taking a look at the output of the Identify file format microservice. One of Archivematica’s most important jobs is to identify file formats and then preserve those files as best as possible.

Steps:

1. When you are prompted, select Yes to identify file formats.
2. Once file format identification is complete, click on the gear icon to the right of the job name to open the job page.
3. On the job page, under the heading STDOUT, you will see information similar to the following:

IDCommand UUID: 8cc792b4-362d-4002-8981-a4e808c04b24
File: (9305a71e-5180-4c49-b93e-c934d7a433dc) /var/archivematica/sharedDirectory/currentlyProcessing/demo-test-f706d98d-faa6-450f-92c7-b608f1106f2e/objects/pictures/MARBLES.TGA
fmt/402

Command output: fmt/402
/var/archivematica/sharedDirectory/currentlyProcessing/demo-test-f706d98d-faa6-450f-92c7-b608f1106f2e/objects/pictures/MARBLES.TGA identified as a Truevision TGA Bitmap 2.0

The above tells us that the file MARBLES.TGA was identified as a Truevision TGA Bitmap 2.0. Archivematica uses PRONOM, a registry of technical information maintained by the National Archives of the UK, for file identification and to inform normalization, characterization, and other file-manipulation events. Archivematica identifies a TGA file as fmt/402 (format 402), which is the PRONOM format identifier for a Truvision TGA Bitmap 2.0. There should be a similar STDOUT section for each item in your transfer.

Archivematica will continue processing your transfer in the background. When you reach the Create SIP from Transfer microservice, read the next section.

Create a SIP¶

The final microservice on the Transfer tab is Create SIP from Transfer. The final job, Create SIP(s), allows you to either proceed directly to the Ingest tab or to send the transfer to the backlog. For more information on the backlog, check out the backlog documentation.

Steps:

1. When prompted, select Create single SIP and continue processing.

Normalization¶

Ingest, like Transfer, is also made up of a series of microservices. The most significant microservice that takes place during ingest is Normalize. Normalization is the process of converting your digital content into appropriate formats for long-term storage (for an AIP) and access (for a DIP). When you reach the Normalization microservice, you will be prompted to decide how you would like to normalize your content.

Steps:

1. Select Normalize for preservation and access when prompted. By selecting this option, you are telling Archivematica that you would like to create a preservation copy (AIP) and an access copy (DIP) of the contents of your SIP.
2. Once normalization is complete, you will be prompted to approve normalization. Before selecting approve, click on the small page icon next to the drop down menu.
3. The Normalization Report will open in a separate tab. Information on how to read this report is included below.
4. In your main tab, click on the Preservation Planning tab at the top of the page. When the Preservation Planning tab is open, search for “SVG” (or whatever file format you would like to review). Click on the name of the file format.
5. You should now have two tabs open - the Normalization Report and the Preservation Planning page. Go back to the Normalization Report and review the next two sections.

Reviewing normalization for preservation¶

The Normalization Report details whether or not normalization was attempted on the contents of your SIP. This screenshot shows the report for lion.svg, identified as a Scalable Vector Graphic, with the preservation columnns highlighted.

If you return to the Preservation Planning tab where you searched for SVG, you can see that SVG files are considered a preservation format. Therefore, the Normalization Report indicates the following:

• Preservation normalization was attempted.
• Preservation normalization did not fail.
• The image was already in a preservation format.

Essentially, this means that preservation normalization kicked off, but Archivematica realized that the file was already in a preservation format and so no action was taken.

Reviewing normalization for access¶

This screenshot shows the report for lion.svg with the access columnns highlighted.

For access normalization, the report indicates the following:

• Access normalization was attempted.
• Access normalization did not fail.
• The image was not in an access format.

To review what this means for lion.svg, we’ll dig a little deeper into the Preservation Planning tab.

Steps:

1. Navigate back to the Preservation Planning tab.
2. Scroll down and find the Normalization section in the left-hand sidebar. Click on Rules.
3. Search for “Scalable Vector Graphics” (or whatever file format you are analyzing).

The results show the Access and Normalization rules for SVG files. Under the Command column we can see that the preferred access format for an SVG is PDF. Archivematica follows these rules to create access copies, so we can infer from the Normalization Report that a PDF copy of the SVG file has been successfully created for the DIP. You can confirm this by checking the command output for the Normalize for access job (similar to how you checked the command output for Identify file format, above) or by reviewing the DIP once it has been stored.

Continue processing your ingest, stopping when you reach the AIP and DIP decision points.

Review AIP¶

Steps:

1. Click on the Archival Storage tab. You should see your AIP listed in the search results there, but if not, you can search for it using the name you gave it in Task #1.
2. Depending on the version of Archivematica you are using, clicking on the name of the AIP will either open the AIP Details page or immediately download the AIP. If you end up on the AIP Details page, click on the ‘download’ button.
3. Once it’s downloaded, open the AIP. You will need to use a program capable of opening 7zip files installed on your computer. If required, you can download 7Zip here: https://www.7-zip.org/download.html
4. Once you have the AIP extracted, navigate through the folders until you find the objects directory. This directory contains the original images from your transfer as well as the preservation copies. You can compare the file formats in the objects directory to the rules in the Preservation Planning tab.
5. Navigate through the folders until you find the METS file and open it in a web browser or text editor. It will be titled something like “METS.7e58760a-e357-4165-9428-26f5bb2ba8ee.xml”.
6. Find the <mets:fileSec> tag in the METS. Within the fileSec, you should be able to find information about every item in your original transfer - these are in the section tagged <mets:fileGrp USE=”original”>. Scrolling down, you can view complementary information for each of the preservation copies - this is in the section tagged <mets:fileGrp USE=”preservation”>.

The METS.xml file is very long because it contains all of the information about your files as well as information about the processes and tools that acted on those original files. For more information about the contents and structure of the METS file, check out the METS page in the metadata section.

Review DIP¶

Steps:

1. In order to retrieve the DIP, you need to access the Archivematica Storage Service. Add “:8000” to the end of your Archivematica VM’s URL (i.e. http://10.10.10.20:8000/).
2. In the Storage Service, click on the Packages tab.
3. On the far right side of the page there is a search box. Search for your DIP by entering the name you gave it in Task #1.
4. You should see two results. One is your AIP and the other is the DIP, indicated under the “Type” column.
5. Once you’ve identified which file is your DIP, click on “Download”.
6. Once it’s downloaded, open the DIP. You will need to use a program capable of opening tar files installed on your computer. 7Zip, mentioned above, can open TAR files: https://www.7-zip.org/download.html
7. Once you have the DIP extracted, open the objects directory. This directory contains the access copies derived from your original images. You can compare the file formats in the objects directory to the rules in the Preservation Planning tab.
8. The DIP also contains a thumbnails directory, which has small JPG versions of your images. If the image could not be converted to a JPG (as is the case with an SVG file), a generic icon is included instead.