NAVA has backup down to a fine art
While upgrading a computer system may enable an organisation to improve its productivity in the long term, the first few weeks after changeover are inevitably taken up with ironing out installation bugs. With this in mind, and a system upgrade now in its final stages, the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) has come to realise the importance of backing up key files at every stage of the changeover process.
With a membership of over 2,500 - which includes a wide variety of practising artists and art organisations, NAVA is Australia's peak advocacy body for the visual arts. A non-profit, membership-based organisation, NAVA represents its members in dealings with all levels of government and other influential arts bodies, and assists visual artists in furthering their professional interests.
Having worked for several years on a combination of Macs and PCs, NAVA has recently undertaken a system upgrade to bring all of the organisation's computers onto a common Macintosh platform. While this standardisation has alleviated a whole range of compatibility issues, the tight time frame, coupled with the relatively limited technical experience of NAVA's staff, has meant that backing up has been a crucial element of the upgrade process.
"We have had to bring the new system online fairly quickly, so a lot of the development has been done on the run," said Nick Hore, NAVA's Visual Arts Industry Unit Co-ordinator. '"We have been using a Jaz drive to progressively back up every stage of the development, keeping multiple copies as a safety net in case we need to address any glitches we may find down the track."
One of the most important files NAVA has had to transfer to the new system is the organisation's detailed database of over 14,000 practising artists and 3000 arts organisations. Developed over several years, the database is one of NAVA's most important resources as it enables the organisation to quickly and easily compile and distribute information for, and on behalf of, its members.
"While we rely on the database for the distribution of our publications, it is also a major resource for arts administrators; a lot of what NAVA does is based on putting people in touch with each other, and without our database we simply couldn't do this effectively," said Mr Hore. "Because we rely so heavily on the database and we are moving so fast with the upgrade, we have been very careful about backing it up at every stage. Also, because of the size of the database file, we needed a fast and powerful backup tool, to alleviate any waiting around for the file to be copied."
For the last eighteen months, NAVA has been using an Iomega Jaz drive as the primary backup for its database and for transporting and saving other key files. Because the Jaz drive operates in much the same way - and at a similar speed - to a hard drive, Nick is able to back up the entire database in less than two minutes.
"Having the Jaz drive has certainly made things a lot easier," he said. "Before using Jaz, I not only had to think about the size of the files I was saving, but also the time it would take to do so. With the Jaz drive I don't have to think twice about saving large slabs of information straight on to the Jaz disk, and the entire backup process is a lot faster, easier and more reliable."
Other applications of the Jaz drive include backing up NAVA's web site and five computer hard drives, transferring large design files to printers and designers and archiving important logos and design files for all of NAVA's publications.
NAVA produces a wide range of documents, from general correspondence, to the information sheets it produces for members. These information sheets offer advice on such topics as fee structures, grants and taxation, and tend to evolve into quite large design files - too large and numerous to be stored on a hard drive.
"We often need to refer back to correspondence and information sheets to confirm details for our members," said Mr Hore. "While in the past this could be quite tedious, the Jaz drive has enabled us to archive more effectively, and tracking down specific files has become a much simpler task."
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