German Federal Archives

How the German Federal Archives digitizes society‘s memory

Up to ten times the speed with Silent Bricks

Challenges

Up to ten petabytes to be digitized per year

Traditional hard disks proved to be a bottleneck

Secure transport of large amounts of data over longer distances

Newsreels from wartime, films such as „Roses for the Prosecutor,“ documents from the end of the 14th century onwards and, since 2021, the Stasi files: the memory of German’s society is stored in the Federal Archives. The documents on paper or film are being digitized more and more: As of 2024, there are supposed to be up to 80 million pages per year. FAST LTA‘s Silent Bricks play a central role here as a fast and transportable storage medium. The speed of digitization could thus be increased almost 10 times compared to the previous solution. Thanks to the change in technology, the data is available in the archive twice as fast. The Federal Archives and its digitization service providers initially store the files on the mobile, practically indestructible storage media, which are transported to Koblenz and then kept there on magnetic tape for eternity. In the meantime, the principle of „digitization on demand“ applies to every new file request - every paper file handled for this purpose is digitized.

»With the Silent Bricks, we get data transfer rates of 500 up to 700 megabytes per second for large files, instead of 80 MB before: This has resulted in an immense advantage and a significant leaner process. We were able to implement the technology very easily without any customization and roll it out to external service providers.«

Timo Dommermuth

IT Specialist at the German Federal Archives

Implementation

Successful proof of concept with integration of external service providers

Smooth project launch with 20 Silent Bricks within a very short period of time

Continuous expansion of capacity

Every era provides new insights: This makes it all the more important to be able to evaluate documents from the past again and again based on the current zeitgeist and state of knowledge. Archives such as the Federal Archives are essential for this purpose. "Every archive is a place of reassurance that makes individual and collective memory possible. In the age of information and digital change, archives are guarantors of national sovereignty," as Prof. Dr. Michael Hollmann, President of the Federal Archives, puts it.

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Outcomes

Data transfer speed increased to up to 700 MB / s

The throughput time until data is digitally available in the archive is more than halved

No more data loss during transport

German Federal Archives

The Federal Archives is a higher federal authority and has the legal mandate to secure the archival material of the Federal Government indefinitely and to have it made usable. Files, maps, pictures, posters, films and sound recordings are stored in analog and digital form. Around 2300 employees currently work at the Federal Archives, about 100 of them in IT. The archive was established in Koblenz in 1952. Prior to that, the Reich Archives on the Brauhausberg in Potsdam had existed as the central archive since 1919. After the end of the war, the Allied powers handed over confiscated documents to the Federal Archives. Since 1955, the Federal Archives have also been responsible for the permanent preservation of the military records of the Federation and its predecessors. In June 2021, responsibility for the records of the Ministry for State Security (MfS) of the former GDR was also handed over to the Federal Archives.