Digital Archives
Mission
The mission of Sri Sathya Sai Digital Archive (SSDA) project is to provide cost-effective, long term preservation repository for digital objects – Multimedia files – like text, images (photos), audio and video clips relating to the following areas
- Important events in the Organisational activities
- Manifestation of Bhagwan’s Divinity
- Transformational Impact on Individuals
- Sri Sathya Sai’s teachings on Education
- Sri Sathya Sai Institutions and their work
(Relating to the current events only)
The Archive will undertake to preserve the digital files received from all over Karnataka and make them available as source for feeding such material to the Central Archive at Parthi.
Archive Model
Currently it is only a National Footprint, encompassing centres all across India. And only the current events are going to be captured afresh, leaving out the historic events of the past as per this model.
The organisation structure for archiving shall be as follows:
Legend
‘Sub’ – Sub Regional Centres are District HQ under whose ambit one or more Districts can remain depending on the penetration in each dist. and the volume of work.
‘Regional’ – Above the Sub Regional Centres are the Regional Centres which are State HQ.
Zone: The zonal centres in Indore, Calcutta, Mumbai and Chennai.
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Digital Objects/Multi-media files like digital Video/Audio/Image and digitised text shall be transferred by CD/DVD from the place of origin to the Main archive through the Sub Regional Centres (District HQ), Regional Centres (State HQ) and Designated Zonal Centres. Then they would be ingressed into the Main Archive Server at Mumbai to be later transferred the Central Server at Parthi through a Software Application, the retrieval through normal search or Advanced search would be done. For e.g. – List of all the Water Projects done by Sai Organisation in Maharashtra in the year 2009. Etc.
There will be a data backup server for redundancy in a different location and also adequate data security measures will be taken to protect the data.
Besides, all the physical media (like CD/DVD) which carry the inputs would be stored at each level (Sub-Regional, Regional and Zonal) as additional copies.
Restricted Access
The Archive will be a “Dark Archive” meaning that there will be no online Public Access to Stored data. Network access to archived data is limited to a small number of senior functionaries of Sri Sathya Sai Seva Organisation as designated and authorised by All India President (AIP). The very purpose is to archive the materials as a feeder to the Main archive at Parthi besides selective current use like release to the local media of select contents after prior approval by designated authorities.
Governance
The SSDA will operate under the guidance of All India President Sri Sathya Sai Seva Organisation.
There will be an Advisory Board which will ensure implementation of the decisions of AIP through the service providers for the SSDA. Currently a Mumbai Agency shall be providing technology support services. A host of designated volunteers would be provided training within the overall framework of Policy decisions and guidelines provided by AIP.
Archive Lifecycle
The framework of the Archiving Life cycle is – Creation, Acquisition, Indexing and Cataloguing, Storage, Preservation and Access
Any vital information, events, occurrences etc. captured in any format relating to the Sai Avatarhood worth preserving for the Posterity and falling within any of the five categories under ‘Mission’ above shall be moved to the Archive as per the laid down procedures.
Input Formats
The Inputs will be only multimedia files-digital objects namely digital Video, Audio, Photos and text files.
The file formats should be – For Photographs – Jpeg – 300 dpi or Tiff -24 bit no compression, Video – .avi Codec H.264, Audio – MP3.
Exception handling
Physical material –Though our endeavour would be to capture all the events and occurrences only in digital photography and digital video, it is quite possible that we may come across some old material which might go with the event/occurrence and cannot be ignored due to their value and relation to the main story like some old photographs or some VHS video which need to be part of the main story which is current and happening now. In such cases they need to be first digitised – scanned in high resolution and converted into digital files so that they can be uploaded into the Archive.
Archive Value and Data Integrity
Determining Archive Value of the event or occurrence in consonance with the 5 factors mentioned under Mission above is a very crucial task and the Sub Regional centre (at District Head Quarters) resource persons trained in this should take care to ensure that only the good value material worth being archived and also worth sharing with Public through Media only go into the Archive after due authentication. Special care should be taken to note the dates, demographic details; statistics etc. in the story .Authenticity and Integrity of Data are very crucial and critical.
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