SPAR (A Distributed Archiving and Preservation System)

The Bibliothèque Nationale de France is engaged in the SPAR (A Distributed Archiving and Preservation System) project.

Here's an excerpt from the project's English home page:

After more than a year of study, BnF launched the SPAR project, true digital stack. Its design is based on international standards authoritative in the subject of the sustainability of digital information. In particular, SPAR respects the OAIS standard (ISO-14721:2003), reference model for an open archival information system. . . .

The SPAR project is much more than a simple stack of secure data.

It makes multiple copies of the digital objects and provides continuous monitoring on the status of the hardware as well as the media containing the recorded files in order to anticipate new copies before a definitive loss.

Through a precise and complete recognition of the formats of the ingested objects, it also guarantees the continuity of access by making the necessary transformations in case of the technological obsolescence of the access software. Hence, for example, when the JPEG image format will become obsolete, SPAR will be able to transform all the appropriate images in a new and more permanent format. . . .

SPAR is a system serving a community. It must guarantee that the documents given back haven't been modified. To this goal, SPAR marks each object with a digital signature. Moreover, to guarantee the access rights of the disseminated digital objects, SPAR uses a rights management system which calculates the usage licenses of the digital objects and applies the necessary restrictions depending on the user . . .