The British Library is adopting a new data security
system that will enable it to safely store web publishing
content.
The library has selected nCipher to protect the integrity of its
National Digital Library.
This library will contain everything from digitised versions of
centuries-old manuscripts to digital journals and web archives, and
is expected to amass up to 300 terabytes of content over the next
five years.
NCipher’s DSE200 document sealing engine has been deployed to
time-stamp and digitally sign every item stored in the
library.
This will ensure that electronic documents and other materials are
authentic and that they have not been modified from the
original.
The British Library receives a copy of every printed publication
produced in the UK and Ireland, and purchases materials from around
the world, contributing to a collection of around 150 million
items.
The Library is already sourcing digitised materials from print
and audio publishers, archiving part of the web and digitising some
of its own collections of printed materials.
The pace will accelerate when the Legal Deposit Libraries Act of
2003, which requires that UK electronic publications are deposited
in the Library and saved as part of the national published archive,
starts to take effect.