The Associated Press leverages the cloud for new digital preservation initiative

AP partners with digital preservation specialist Preservica to safeguard its corporate records and keep the history of news alive

The Associated Press (AP) has begun a new collaboration with digital preservation specialist, Preservica, to future-proof its corporate records and unique news wires using Preservica’s digital preservation platform hosted in the AWS Cloud.

Established in 1846, AP is the essential global news network, delivering fast, unbiased news to all media platforms and formats. AP journalists work in 280 locations in more than 100 countries around the world.

In 2003, AP established its Corporate Archives under the direction of Valerie Komor. Over the past 12 years, her objective has been to create a systematic way of acquiring, organizing, preserving and making accessible the organization’s historical records, which span from 1848 to the present and include reporters’ notes, images, videos and millions of new and historical wire feeds. The Archives primarily serves AP journalists and staff, but it is also open to outside researchers by appointment.

With the surge of “born-digital” records over the past three decades, the challenge of ensuring long-term preservation and accessibility has become more complicated. To meet this challenge the Associated Press chose to use Preservica’s Cloud Edition, hosted on AWS, to safeguard their records and automate the technical burden of ensuring digital content remains readable and useable into the future by actively managing and migrating files to newer formats as old formats become obsolete.

The Associated Press anticipates adding the full set of AP annual reports (1875-2012) as well as a set of charters and bylaws (1895-2014). “We thought we would start by preserving those records that we need to ensure business continuity,” commented Komor. “The first tranche of 2TB of data – TIFFs and PDFs – has now been successfully ingested into the system.”

AP is also digitizing and uploading collections of original wire copy, which are in demand by journalists and historians alike. These include the voluminous reporting on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. Some of these sheets feature the hurried pencil edits of the editor working as fast as possible to get the story out. “You can actually see the letters cascading down each page, evidence that the editor was pulling the paper out of the teletype while it was still printing,” explained Komor.

Preservica CEO Jon Tilbury added: “The Associated Press joins a growing number of forward-thinking corporations using Preservica in the Cloud to safeguard their vital digital records. AP has a valuable corporate history, as well as over a century and a half of news to protect. We feel very privileged to have Preservica chosen by AP.”

About Preservica

Preservica is a world leader in digital preservation technology, consulting and research. Our active preservation solutions are used by leading businesses, archives, libraries, museums and government organizations globally, to safeguard and share valuable digital content, collections and electronic records, for decades to come. These include the European Commission, the Met Office, Texas State Archives, Wellcome Library and HSBC, to name a few.

Preservica’s award-winning digital preservation and access software is a complete, standards-based (OAIS ISO 14721) trusted repository that includes connectors to leading Enterprise Content and Records Management systems to ensure long-term usability, trustworthiness and preservation of vital digital records, emails and content.

Visit: www.preservica.com

In the US: For further information, please contact: Maria Doyle, maria@doylestratcomm.com, +1-781-964-3536

In the UK: For further information, please contact: Ilona Hitel, ihitel@thecommsco.com, or mobile: 07734 355205.