Digital Archiving Trends in Estonia
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Director of the Digital Archives of the National Archives
The National Archives of Estonia is the main public institution that preserves archival documents. The Digital Archives of the National Archives has to deal with all kinds of digital archival records.
In practice, so far the main deliveries of digital records to the archives have been connected to non-regular events, such as reforms of institutions or public registers. But as the widespread use of digitally signed documents in the Estonian public sector is celebrating its first decade, a notable inflow of digital deliveries to the National Archives is predicted from 2015 onwards. This is also supported by the new Archives Act (in force from 1 January 2012) which reduced the general delivery period of archival documents from public institutions to the National Archives from the previous 20 years to 10 years, keeping first and foremost in mind the digitally created records. The Digital Archives uses migration (not emulation) as the main long-term preservation strategy. To enable convenient delivery procedures of digital records from public institutions, the Digital Archives has developed special software (Universal Archiving Module or UAM) for the archivists of institutions. Other current issues in the field of long-term digital archiving include solving the problems of preserving digitally created film footages as well as public registers and databases.