Tool Functions

Click on a function view the digital preservation tools that perform that function.

Lifecycle Functions	Definition
Academic Social Networking	Tools that support making connections, sharing research and maximising the impact of digital data.
Access	Tools that facilitate access to digital data by users.
Active Data Storage	Tools that support the storage, management, and ultimately the preservation, of evolving research data.
Annotation	Tools that facilitate annotation of digital data by users.
Appraisal	Tools that enable the assessment of content against in order to decide on it's relevance or appropriateness for preservation
Backup	Tools that support the backing up of digital data to another storage location, typically in a scheduled manner.
Benefits	Tools that enable the identification and articulation of the benefits of preservation and curation.
Binary & Hexidecimal Editing	Tools for viewing and editing of files displayed in different views such as binary, hexadecimal. These are typically known as hex editors.
Citation and Impact Tracking	Tools that support the citation of data and the tracking of the impact of usage of that data.
Content Profiling	Tools that build a profile of the characteristics of digital content, typically by combining or analysing a number of sources of information such as extracted metadata and file format identifications.
Costing	Tools that support the calculation or prediction of the cost of preservation or curation activities.
Data Management Planning	Tools that support the development of research data management plans and related activities.
Data capture and Deposit	Tools that enable the capture and deposit of data.
De-Duplication	Tools that enable the identification and/or removal of duplicate or similar files.
Decryption	Tools for recovering passwords or unlocking encrypted digital files.
Dependency Analysis	Tools for identifying essential information that resides externally to a digital object, or for identifying dependent processes such as which DLLs are required by a Windows process.
Discovery	Tools that facilitate the discovery of digital data by users.
Disk Imaging	Tools that enable the capture, viewing or extraction of contents of a disk image (which is a computer file containing the contents and structure of a disk volume or an entire data storage device, such as a hard drive or floppy disk).
Emulation	Tools that enable the emulation or virtualisation of a hardware or software system on another system.
Encryption Detection	Tools that support the detection of encryption or password protection in files.
File Copy	Tools that support the copying of files from one storage location to another, typically with facilities to verify the completeness of the copy and enable resumption of copying after an interruption.
File Format Identification	Tools that enable the automatic identification of the file format of a particular file, typically by examining characteristic codes (often termed file format magic) in the file header.
File Format Migration	Tools that support the transformation of data from one file format to another.
File Management	Tools that support general file management activities such as viewing or renaming
File Recovery	Tools that support the recovery of data from damaged or corrupted storage devices such as disks.
Fixity	Tools that support the verification of file fixity, typically through the generation and validation of checksum based manifests.
Forensic	Tools that support forensics related functions.
Managing Active Research Data	Tools that enable researchers to manage data from its point of creation, facilitating its productive use in the present, but also establishing the support structures necessary to ensure its future survival.
Metadata Extraction	Tools that support the extraction of metadata from files.
Metadata Processing	Tools that support the processing or management of metadata.
Multi Format Rendering	Tools that support the rendering of a cross section of file format or content categories.
OCR	Tools that support the generation of text from bitmap images, otherwise known as Optical Character Recognition
Organisational Audit	Tools that that enable an audit of an organisation's capability with respect to preservation, typically relating to a maturity model
Passive Data Storage	Tools that support the passive preservation of digital resources on storage media such as paper, film or DNA.
Persistent Identification	Tools that support the unique and persistent identification of files or intellectual entities.
Personal Archiving	Tools that support the preservation and archiving of data relating to individuals.
Planning	Tools that support the planning of preservation activities.
Policy	Tools that support the development and management of digital preservation policy.
Preservation System	Digital repository applications that typically perform a number of functions across the digital lifecycle such as ingest, storage, preservation action and access.
Quality Assurance	Tools that support quality checking of digital resources, identifying damaged, incomplete or low quality data. Typically used to identify damage introduced via processes such as format migration or digitisation.
Redaction	Tools that support the removal of selected information from digital files. Typically used for removal of sensitive information like telephone or credit card numbers from personal archives before providing access to users.
Rendering	Tools that support the rendering of digital resources so they can be viewed, printed, or otherwise accessed by users.
Repair	Tools that support the repair of damaged or corrupted data.
Secure Deletion	Tools that support deletion of data in a way that cannot be reversed, typically to avoid third parties stealing sensitive information from decommissioned or recycled hardware.
Service	Tools that operate as a remote, perhaps cloud based, service
Storage	Tools that support the storage of digital resources, possibly in multiple locations to avoid loss of data due to hardware or other failures.
Transfer	Tools that support transfer of packaged digital resources from one organization to another.
Validation	Tools that support the validation of digital files, typically against a file format specification.
Version Control	Tools that support the tracking of changes to digital files over time.
Web Capture	Tools that support the capture of data from the world wide web, by "crawling" links between resources or other approaches.
Workflow	Tools that support the orchestration and management of specific tools or processes in a workflow.
Workflow and Lab Notebook Management	Tools that support the capture and management of research data as well as the details of the research activities which generated them.