AVPreserve releases free tools to support digital preservation

To celebrate UNESCO World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, AVPreserve is releasing two new digital preservation utilities -- *Fixity* and *MDQC* -- and re-announcing the recent release of the tools I*nterstitial* and *AVCC*.

These utilities are designed to support various aspects of the digital preservation process, from selection and planning to quality control and monitoring. Each tool is free and open to the public. Visit http://www.avpreserve.com/avpsresources/tools/ on October 28th to download the source code and user guides.

*Fixity:* Fixity is a utility for the documentation and regular review and monitoring of checksums of stored files. Fixity scans a folder or directory, creating a database of the files, locations, and checksums contained within, against which a regular comparative analysis can be run.

*MDQC:* MDQC reads the embedded metadata of a file or directory and
compares it against a set of rules defined by the user, verifying that the technical and administrative specs of the files are correct. This automates and minimizes the time needed to QC large batches of digitized assets, increasing the efficiency of managing digitization projects.

*Interstitial:* The Interstitial Error Utility compares two streams of the digitized audio captured on separate devices. Irregularities that appear in one stream and not in the other point to issues like Interstitial Errors that relate to samples lost when writing to disc. This greatly decreases the amount of time needed for QC of the integrity of digitized audio.

*AVCC:* AVCC provides a simple template for documenting audio, video, and film collections, breaking the approach down into a granular record set with recommendations for minimal capture and more complex capture. The record set focuses on technical aspects of the audiovisual object with the understanding that materials in collections are often inaccessible and have limited descriptive annotations. The data entered then feeds into automated reports that support planning for preservation prioritization, storage, and reformatting.

More information at
http://www.avpreserve.com/news/avpreserve-metro-release-audiovisual-cata...