Most of us have lost a file at some point. A photo that wouldn’t open. A video that just stopped playing. It’s a small heartbreak, and it happens more than anyone would like.
At Permanent, this worry is exactly what drives a lot of decisions you never see. One of the biggest is a tool called Archivematica, which we’ve built into how we care for your files behind the scenes. Here’s what it actually does, and why we’ve chosen to build our preservation work around it.
What Archivematica Does
When you upload something to Permanent, Archivematica gets to work right away. It creates two versions of your file. One is an easy-access copy, so you can view or download it whenever you want. The other is a preservation copy, built specifically using open, non-proprietary formats so it doesn’t quietly become outdated or unreadable down the road. This happens across everything you upload, whether it’s a document, a photo, an audio recording, or a video. Along the way, it also checks your files for damage or corruption, scans them for viruses, and keeps your original file safe, untouched, alongside everything else.
At the same time, every action taken on your file is carefully logged and documented as part of the preservation process. This creates a clear, detailed history for every item in your archive, following the same recordkeeping practices used by professional archives around the world.
Why We Care
We didn’t build this from scratch, and we didn’t want to. Archivematica is an open source preservation system already trusted by some of the most respected institutions in the world, including Harvard Business School, the Museum of Modern Art, Columbia University Libraries, and the Rockefeller Archive Center.
Because Archivematica is open source, it isn’t locked to any single company. It’s maintained by a community, which means it can be reviewed, improved, and trusted rather than hidden away behind someone else’s black box. That matters to us. We think the tools protecting your memories should be ones you can trust for the right reasons, not just because a company tells you to. It follows OAIS, short for Open Archival Information System, which is the internationally recognized way for digital preservation.
Permanent has taken this a step further, building on a model first pioneered by CERN to run Archivematica in a way that can grow and adapt as needed. Instead of running as one single system, it’s broken into individual pieces that can each be scaled up on their own. So when a lot of people are uploading files at once, we can add more resources to just the parts that need it, keeping things running smoothly without slowing anyone down. It’s the same kind of preservation infrastructure used by world-class institutions, now something you can access simply by having a Permanent account.
Why This Matters
At the end of the day, this matters because your files are more than just data. They’re the photo from your kid’s first birthday, the recording of a grandparent’s voice, the letter you almost threw away. These are the things that make up a life, and they deserve more than a hope that the technology holding them keeps working.
Preservation isn’t a one-time action. It’s an ongoing responsibility, one that requires the right formats, the right processes, and the right standards to keep pace with a world that’s always changing. By building on Archivematica, we’re making sure that responsibility doesn’t fall on you. You shouldn’t need a background in archiving to trust that your files are safe.
That’s the whole point of Permanent. When you save something with us, it’s in good hands, today and forever.
If you haven’t already, start building your own archive with Permanent today.
