PANDORA Digital Archiving System (PANDAS)
The PANDORA Digital Archiving System, known as PANDAS, was developed by the
National Library following an unsuccessful attempt to find an
off-the-shelf system (or systems) to provide an integrated,
web-based, web archiving management system.
The need for such a system was evident as the scale of the
Library's archiving activity increased and if the best possible
efficiencies were to be achieved in building a collaborative,
selective and quality assessed web archive. It was also necessary
to enable PANDORA partners to contribute to the Archive from
various geographic locations.
PANDAS was first implemented in June 2001, and a second much
enhanced version was released in August 2002.
Workflows
PANDAS was designed to support the workflows defined by the
staff of the National Library's Digital Archiving Section, and
also adopted by the other PANDORA partners. These workflows
include:
- identifying, selecting and registering candidate titles;
- seeking and recording permission to archive;
- setting harvest regimes;
- gathering (harvesting) files;
- undertaking quality assurance checking;
- initiating archiving processes; and
- organising access, display and discovery routes to, and
metadata for, the archived resources.
Functions
PANDAS supports these work flows by means of the following
functions:
- the management of administrative metadata about titles that
have been either selected for archiving, rejected, or are
being monitored pending a decision;
- the management of access restrictions;
- the scheduling and initiation of the harvesting of titles
selected for archiving;
- the management of the quality checking and assurance process
and associated problem fixing;
- the preparation and organisation of archived instances for
public display through title entry pages, and title and subject
listings; and
- the provision of defined management reports.
Manuals
For further information on how PANDAS supports these functions,
refer to the PANDAS Manual
(complete) and the PANDAS
Quick Start Guide.
Persistent identifiers
PANDAS assigns a system generated running number to each title
when it is registered. This number becomes part of the persistent
URL applicable to each archived title's title entry page. The
PANDAS persistent URL is generated according to a schema
developed by the National Library for its digital collections.
The persistent URL, or persistent identifier, is recorded on
the title entry page for every title.
As well as providing a persistent identifier at the title level,
PANDAS also creates one for all of the component parts, for
instance, for an article within a issue of an electronic journal,
or for an image or a table within a web site. The persistent
identifier for any part of a title that a researcher may wish
to cite can be ascertained by using the citation
service. This is available towards the bottom of every title
entry page, just under the persistent identifier for the title.
Technical documents
For more detailed information about PANDAS see:
PANDAS Evaluation System
Following expressions of interest from other institutions planning
to set up web archiving programs, the Library created the PANDAS
Evaluation System to enable access to the software by other
agencies for assessment purposes.
To request access to the PANDAS Evaluation System, contact
Margaret Phillips, Director Digital Archiving, mphillips@nla.gov.au
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