I been on a lengthy hiatus entitled "full-time fall semester with 2 jobs and an internship". Please pardon me. Fortunately, I have been engaged both in digital preservation and web design/information architecture, so I also have a lot to share. I fully intend to complete my excursion into 23 Things for Archivists, but during the semester it's not really feasible. Instead I am happy to share some of my digital preservation work here. I recently delved into the XENA software from the National Archives of Australia, and have included a brief report below (with an introduction to XENA). May you find it useful!
XENA
Besides being a leather-clad television warrior princess with a saucy blond sidekick, XENA, is also a digital preservation tool created by the National Archives of Austalia. XENA (XML Electronic Nomalising for Archives) is a free, open source software (yay!) it can be downloaded from Sourgeforge.net, bearer of all (okay, many) things open source! Download the National Archives of Australia XENA software at Sourceforge.net. XENA takes certain of your digital/media files and converts them to preservation-friendly formats (open source, well-supported, community-driven). It then wraps them in metadata and goodies to help render them in the future. The result is a .xena file that XENA will be able to open in the future, unlike your dusty old MS Powerpoints that you made in Windows 95 (and copyright, and copyright, and copyright, Microsoft).
Here's the rundown, from what I gathered:
PROS:
- Converts proprietary file formats to a limited number of open formats the ideas here being that:
- 1. Open formats have greater longevity and there will always be means to open them
- 2. Supporting fewer file formats is easier and cheaper for a repository.
- Fast and simple* (*once configured. I'll come back to that).
- Viewer is included with Xena
- Even though the original file is wrapped into an XML file, the reader will allow you to view what's in there).
- Files can be exported via the viewer.
- Unsupported files can still be binary normalised ("normalized", if you're not using The Queen's English :) ).
- You can still create a .xena file, but the file will not be normalized into a preservation-friendly format.
- The list of formats accepted by XENA is decently long, but still limited.
- Accepted formats can be found here: List of formats supported by XENA, by type
- *Installation and configuration can be a bit tricky.
- That was the asterisk above. The program is very easy to run, as long as it is configured properly. You'll want to read the documentation about configuration carefully.
- If not installing from Windows .zip file, other downloads are required.
- XENA uses several plug-ins to make the conversions successful. It needs Open Office for all downloads, and additional plugins if you're working from Mac OS or Linux. Again, make sure to read the documentation.
- There are some bugs.
- I had trouble converting MS Office applications from Windows XP, for example, which is a known issue. If you feel like reading my report, I talk about it down below. You can visit the Sourgeforge Bug Tracker for XENA or the Wiki of Known Issues with XENA on Sourceforge for more information.
- XENA supports .gzip, .jar, .tar, .zip, .mp3, .wav, .aiff, .ogg, .flac, .sql, .csv, .tsv, .ppt, .doc, .pps, .xsl, .xlsx, .pptx, .docx, .mpp, .rtf, .sylk, .sxc, .sxi, .sxw, .wpd, .pst, .trim, .bmp, .cur, .gif, .pcx, .psd, .ras, .svg, .tiff, .css, .xlst, and etc., etc., etc.... but who supports .xena!?
Report on Working with Xena
