XML Processing in the Cloud: Large-Scale Digital Preservation in Small Institutions

Digital preservation deals with the problem of retaining the meaning of digital information over time to ensure its accessibility. The process often involves a workflow which transforms the digital objects. The workflow defines document pipelines containing transformations and validation checkpoints, either to facilitate migration for persistent archival or to extract metadata. The transformations, nevertheless, are computationally expensive, and therefore digital preservation can be out of reach for an organization whose core operation is not in data conservation. The operations described the document workflow, however, do not frequently reoccur. This paper combines an implementation-independent workflow designer with cloud computing to support small institution in their ad-hoc peak computing needs that stem from their efforts in digital preservation.