London: 27th September 2007

The National Archives is awarded the Conservation Award 2007 for its work on active preservation through the development of two tools: the PRONOM Technical Registry and Digital Record Object Identification (DROID) file format identification. The award was made at a ceremony held at the British Museum on the 27th September 2007. The Award is sponsored by the Digital Preservation Coalition and recognises the many new initiatives being carried out by museums, libraries, galleries and archives in the challenging field of digital preservation.

The winners of the 2007 Conservation Awards were

Winner of the Award for Conservation 2007The Scottish Conservation Studio for Perth Museum & Art Gallery - A rare silk early 17th-century doublet

Winner of the Award for Care of Collections 2007Durham University Library - North East Collections Care Scheme

Winner of the Student Conservator of the Year Award 2007Rachel Morrison and The Courtauld Institute of Art - Surface cleaning of unvarnished paintings

Winner of the Digital Preservation Award 2007The National Archives of the UK - Active preservation at The National Archives: PRONOM and DROID

Winner of the Anna Plowden Trust Award for Research and Innovation 2007Professor Norman Tennent, Fyne Conservation Services and Dr Jim Nobbs, University of Leeds - Colour-matching for ceramic conservation

The 2007 Awards Despatch Newsletter provides further detail on the above awards.

The Digital Conservation Coalition (DCF) press announcement states:

“An innovative tool to analyse and identify computer file formats has won the 2007 Digital Preservation Award. DROID, developed by The National Archives in London, can examine any mystery file and identify its format. The tool works by gathering clues from the internal 'signatures' hidden inside every computer file, as well as more familiar elements such as the filename extension (.jpg, for example), to generate a highly accurate 'guess' about the software that will be needed to read the file.”

The National Archive announcement states:

“Almost all the records created in government and an increasing number of those arriving at The National Archives, are now electronic. As technologies change and inevitably become obsolete, the information in these documents risks becoming inaccessible, providing one of the most fundamental challenges of digital preservation. A major challenge for The National Archives has been to develop the capability to preserve digital records in accessible form, across time and evolving technology.

The National Archives' PRONOM Technical Registry answers this challenge. PRONOM is an online knowledge base providing a simple interface to allow users to query a database of technical information on over 600 file formats and 250 software tools. In conjunction with this tool, The National Archives has also developed a standalone format identification tool called DROID, which identifies and reports the specific file format versions of digital files. Freely available to download under an Open Source licence and written in platform-independent Java, DROID supports batch processing of large numbers of files.”

In 2004 The National Archives also were awarded the award for Digital Preservation in 2004.