National Archives Applied Research

Applied Research Partner Project Highlights

NARA’s Applied Research partners work with us to leverage new theories, knowledge, methods and techniques to advance our knowledge about the lifecycle of electronic records. The following projects highlight research coordinated through the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Program, highlighting work that impacts the lifecycle management of records.

Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) logo Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI)

PERPOS – A suite of tools that support archival processes for Accessioning, Preservation, Arrangement, Review/Redaction, and Description of electronic records; PERPOS was initially designed to process Presidential Records.

Robust Digital File Format Identification – Tools and improved methods for automated file type identification and technology transfer to the National Archives of the UK for incorporation into PRONOM/DROID.

Read a case study about these two research projects:
Preserving History: GTRI Assists National Archives of United Kingdom in Identifying Archival Files

Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), University of Texas logo Texas Advanced Computing Center
(TACC), University of Texas

Visualization Framework – A scalable solution that combines different data analysis methods into a visualization framework that facilitates understanding of large-scale collections of electronic records.

Read about the Visualization Framework in the following article: A Window on the Archives of the Future

The Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill logo The Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI)
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

CI-BERThe Cyberinfrastructure for Billions of Electronic Records is NARA’s electronic records testbed, enabling the examination of relevant preservation/access technologies and processes for large volumes of diverse and complex electronic records that may be stored in various repositories. CI-BER includes tools supporting search of large digital records collections from tablets or smart phones based on geospatial attributes mined from individual files in the collections.

iRODS – The Integrated Rule Oriented Data System is an open source data grid that helps in the organization and management of large collections of distributed digital data.

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign logo The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Research Projects:

Software:

CSR - The Conversion Software Registry is a repository of information about software packages that are capable of file format conversions. This registry complements file format registries – such as PRONOM, above, and the Unified Digital Format Registry (UDFR) – motivated by a community need for finding file format conversions inaccessible via current search methods.

Polyglot - Provides an extensible, scalable, and quantifiable means of converting between file formats:

  • Extensible: easily incorporates new conversion software;
  • Scalable: distributes work load among parallel machines; and
  • Quantifiable: built-in framework measures information loss across conversions.

Download software at: http://isda.ncsa.illinois.edu/drupal/software

Versus is a framework being developed to facilitate content-based pair-wise file comparison.


For more information about the Applied Research Partners and Projects:

National Archives Applied Research
8601 Adelphi Road, Room 3311
College Park, MD 20740-6001
E-mail: Applied Research@nara.gov 
Phone: 301-837-0365
Fax: 301-837-3522
http://www.facebook.com/NARACAST

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