Building Finland’s digital memory – 10 years of digital preservation

The national Digital Preservation Services (DPS) are like Finland’s digital emergency stockpile: the integrity, authenticity and usability of valuable digital content is preserved even for centuries to come. Thanks to these services, future generations will be able to watch classic Finnish films, read old books, and access unique research data.

There are two services:

• The Digital Preservation Service for Cultural Heritage stores a wide variety of culture heritage materials, such as films, media art, music, digitized books, and websites.
• The Fairdata Digital Preservation Service preserves selected research datasets from different fields, ensuring that unique research materials can be reused in the future.

Today, 22 museums, libraries, archives, universities, and research organizations under Finland’s Ministry of Education and Culture already rely on DPS.

“The mission of DPS is simple, yet crucial for society: to ensure that research data and cultural heritage remain comprehensible and usable over time. Without DPS, parts of our culture and science could be lost forever,” says Kimmo Koivunen, Director, Cultural Heritage and Research Data Lifecycle Management at CSC.

Close cooperation to preserve the content

CSC produces the national DPS on behalf of the Ministry of Education and Culture and serves as its technical and operational home. Once the ministry and the organization in question decide which materials should be preserved, a close collaboration begins between CSC and the organization providing the data.

CSC’s role is to provide the technical expertise and service infrastructure. This includes supporting and guiding the partner organization, receiving, validating, packaging, and transferring materials into the DPS system, managing storage hardware and backup copies, and ensuring data integrity through monitoring and file format migration when needed.

Digital preservation differs from regular backup or storing data: it includes actively maintaining the data. For example, CSC ensures that file formats are usable, the data is enriched with sufficient metadata, and that all preservation actions are thoroughly documented to guarantee the data authenticity.

Digital preservation is not just a technical task. It’s a cultural and societal responsibility.

Kimmo Koski, CSC

As devices, software, file formats, systems, and also people inevitably change and become obsolete over time, continuity planning and risk management are essential parts of the DPS. Risks are mitigated, for example, by storing data in multiple locations and as several copies using different storage solutions. Due to the large data volume, the process is highly automated, requiring specific expertise from CSC in technical implementation as well as in identifying and further developing existing solutions.

The key responsibilities of an organization using the DPS include selecting and describing the materials to be preserved. Organizations are best positioned to identify the most significant materials in their field and to know how they should be described to enable future use.

Half a billion files preserved

Today, alreadt half a billion digital cultural heritage and research data files are stored in the DPS – over four petabytes of data. The amount equals about one billion photos or one million HD movies, and it increases every year.

This fall marks the 10th anniversary of Finland’s national DPS. The work has its roots in the National Digital Library project (2008–2017) of the Ministry of Education and Culture, which sought solutions to the challenges of managing, utilizing, and preserving cultural heritage materials. As archives, museums, and libraries began to digitize their collections and acquire born-digital materials, a critical question emerged: how can we make sure these materials remain usable in the future – even a hundred years from now?

The Ministry, cultural heritage organizations, and CSC collaborated closely to plan and develop a suitable solution. After experimental pilot phases, both the organizations and CSC were ready to begin preserving data. The first data was accepted into the DPS for Cultural Heritage in the fall of 2015. Preservation of research data began in the Fairdata DPS in 2019.

“CSC already had a strong role as a provider of national research and data services. It was natural that CSC became the home of DPS – a place where data is kept safe also in the future. Digital preservation is not just a technical task. It’s a cultural and societal responsibility,” says Kimmo Koski, CSC’s Managing Director.

Watch a video on DPS. The article continues after the video.

Preserving digital films is demanding

One of the key responsibilities of the National Audiovisual Institute (KAVI) is to digitize and preserve Finland’s audiovisual heritage – mainly films, but also radio and television programs.

Preserving digital film materials is demanding: a single movie can require more than 10 terabytes of storage space. In 2010, before starting digitization of Finnish films, KAVI and CSC jointly implemented the Digivarasto (Digistorage) digital archive, as it was clear that a tape archive would be required for such amounts of data. Digivarasto is still in use today, but it’s gradually being phased out.

KAVI’s first materials were transferred to the Digital Preservation Service for Cultural Heritage in 2016. KAVI uses the service to archive original film scans that take up the most storage space. Today, 3.4 petabytes of these are safely preserved, making KAVI the largest user of the DPS for Cultural Heritage.

“When we started to digitize film, it would have been impossible for KAVI to acquire and maintain a tape archive on its own. CSC has been a long-term and reliable partner for us. Our collaboration began already in 2008 when KAVI established the radio and television archive. Over the years, it has expanded and evolved into a very smooth partnership,” says Mikko Kuutti, Deputy Director at KAVI.

Globally unique national service

CSC is actively involved in international digital preservation communities. Finland’s national, centralized DPS system is internationally unique: no other country has a national service that spans so many sectors. Finland is recognized as a pioneer in showing how collaboration between science, culture, and technology can build digital civilization.

Finland is also a frontrunner in sustainable digital preservation. CSC monitors and reports the carbon footprint of the DPS and strives to operate the services as sustainably as possible.

“In ten years, the field has matured in Europe, and the focus has shifted from technological development to, for example, sustainability. At the same time, global networks for digital preservation have become well established, and now also the needs of developing countries are taken into account. The change has been significant,” says Kimmo Koivunen.

The 10th anniversary of the DPS was celebrated at a seminar in late October. The event brought together partner organizations and stakeholders to reflect on the journey so far and look ahead to the decades to come.

“We have together built a system that safeguards our nation’s memory. It successfully combines international standards with national needs. Today, we can say with confidence that the investment decision was the right one,” said Heidi Backman, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Education and Culture.

“It has been a great pleasure and an honor to work on something so meaningful together with the organizations, and to see how they cherish Finland’s cultural heritage and research data. From CSC’s perspective, we believe this collaboration will remain fruitful far into the future,” Koivunen concludes.

Image: Adobe Stock

Kimmo Koivunen

Director, Cultural Heritage and Research Data Lifecycle Management

Kimmo Koivunen is responsible for service related to Data Lifecycle Management.

+358 9 4572445 kimmo.koivunen(at)csc.fi