Gregory Jansen
Research Software Architect, College of Information Studies
University of Maryland
Richard Marciano
Professor and Director, Digital Curation Innovation Center, College of Information Studies
University of Maryland
DRASTIC (digital repository at scale that invites computation), is an open source digital repository platform for creating horizontally scaling archives that serve the national library, archives, and scientific data management communities. Through the emerging DRASTIC community project we intend to provide a credible solution for Big Data management in large organizations in the cultural heritage, business, and scientific research communities. DRASTIC was developed by Archives Analytics Solutions ltd., in collaboration with the University of Maryland’s Digital Curation Innovation Center (DCIC) in the College of Information Studies as the result of a $10.5 M National Science Foundation grant. The software is based on the most widely used distributed database, Apache Cassandra, created to meet the scaling needs of companies like Facebook. DRASTIC supports integration by providing a standard RESTful Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI), a command-line interface, web interface, and messaging as contents are changed (MQTT). We will introduce the project, show participants how we use it today, and explain our plans to enhance archival data, perform computational analyses, and integrate with other archival platforms.