FN - Provisions, Archiving

Archiving

The Swiss National Sound Archives has a sophisticated digital archive, which satisfies all the requirements, in terms of security and continuity, of the international standards. This service is particularly attractive for private individuals or small archives that have neither the means nor the critical mass to purchase and maintain an archive of their own of this type.

Conditions

The Swiss National Sound Archives stores in its digital archiving system high resolution archive files, access files in compressed format, files with technical metadata in XML format, and any other type of file necessary for the user, in the form of AIP (Archival Information Package) units.
The user is assigned a safe encrypted access to his own collection of digital materials via FTP (File Transfer Protocol). This access allows him to exercise all of his rights (reading, writing, deletion, etc.) in relation to the stored documents, and therefore entails a certain degree of responsibility on his part. The Swiss National Sound Archives Management has access to these holdings of materials for administrative purposes only.
The Swiss National Sound Archives guarantees the security and integrity of the data according to the OAIS (Open Archival Information System) reference model. Each file is accompanied by an integrity code (checksum) and it is saved in a transparent mode in at least two separate places.
The Swiss National Sound Archives is responsible for the periodical renewal of the technical infrastructure, as a guarantee for long-term archiving and access. Before every major intervention, the user is informed.
The contracts entered into are not limited in time. Every collection of materials remains the exclusive property of the user, who may withdraw it at any time giving 3 months' prior notice.

Costs

The cost of this service amounts to CHF 315.00 / TB / month. The smallest unit of calculation is 10GB, regardless of its content. An example of a calculation, with audio documents, follows:

The user stores in the archives of the Swiss National Sound Archives 500 hours of recordings of CD quality (44.1 kHz, 16 bit). The space necessary for the high-resolution files is around 296GB, the compressed files for the users need around 25GB, the metadata plus 500 640x640px images in jpeg format need another 3GB. As a total we therefore have 324GB - the cost of the archiving service will therefore be CHF 100.00 per month.