1. A computer program product to archive digital content comprising: a computer usable storage medium having computer usable program code embodied therewith, the computer usable program code comprising: computer usable program code configured to implement an archive storage area; computer usable program code configured to implement a manifest that is stored within the archive storage area when the archive storage area is loaded onto a storage device, the manifest comprising an index of items stored in the unified structure of the archive; computer usable program code configured to implement at least one backup queue that temporarily queues a list of items that satisfy predetermined backup criteria but have not been backed up; and computer usable program code configured to implement and archive service that: intermediates between software modules and the archive storage area to control requests for access to items stored in the unified storage structure by interacting with and correspondingly updating the index of the manifest as items are retrieved and stored in the unified storage structure; and interacts with each backup queue to back up items stored in the archive storage area at predetermined times based upon predetermined backup criteria for each backup queue.