Abstract: This paper discusses how the arrival of born-digital content in archives and other cultural heritage institutions requires a commitment to practices developed over recent decades in the handling of electronic records, in addition to reconsidered approaches to acquisition and access. These changes are discussed within the context of the manuscripts and computers that comprise Salman Rushdie’s personal literary “papers,” which are housed at Emory University’s Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL). Early in the development of the Rushdie project, the library made a commitment to approach the material as holistically as possible, to prioritize the integration of paper and digital, and to balance the needs of the donor with those of researchers. The paper outlines how the library developed researcher tools that allow concurrent exploration of the paper material and the born-digital material via emulation and item-level, database-driven searches.
Annotation: When processing Rushdie’s hybrid collection, Emory University decided to recreate an authentic environment for researchers of the author’s digital archives. Recognizing that the materiality of born digital archives can be just as an important as its informational content, Emory chose a dual approach to providing access to this type of material. The project team created a searchable database of Rushdie’s documents as well as an emulated version of Rushdie’s computing environment. These resources were made available in a workstation accessible in the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library’s reading room. Connections were made between these resources and the finding aid which described the paper materials within the Rushdie collection.
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Annotation: Dean and Tuomala describe their processing of a hybrid archival collection acquired by the University of North Carolina Wilson Special Collections Library. The collection, the John Kenyon Chapman Papers, offered the library's technical services staff its first chance to process born-digital materials. The authors highlight the decisions they made regarding the collection's arrangement and description, focusing especially on whether and how to integrate the description of born-digital materials with the description of the collection's analog materials. Other focal points of the chapter are the creation of customized software—Curator’s Workbench—to prepare submission information packages, the EAD encoding practice for digital objects, and the display of archival records through the university's institutional digital repository. Because it provides a comprehensive survey of procedures beginning with arrangement and concluding with access, this case study will prove especially useful for archival repositories that are currently creating workflows for born-digital collections and seeking to align those procedures with their institution's existing descriptive practices.
Abstract: Digital forensics tools have many potential applications in the curation of digital materials in libraries, archives and museums (LAMs). Open source digital forensics tools can help LAM professionals to extract digital contents from born-digital media and make more informed preservation decisions. Many of these tools have ways to display the metadata of the digital media, but few provide file-level access without having to mount the device or use complex command-line utilities. This paper describes a project to develop software that supports access to the contents of digital media without having to mount or download the entire image. The work examines two approaches in creating this tool: First, a graphical user interface running on a local machine. Second, a web-based application running in web browser. The project incorporates existing open source forensics tools and libraries including The Sleuth Kit and libewf along with the Flask web application framework and custom Python scripts to generate web pages supporting disk image browsing.
Annotation: Misra et al. describe the rationale, methodology, and evolution of the open-source software Disk Image Access for the Web (DIMAC), developed by authors Misra and Woods with the support of the BitCurator project at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. The authors explain that DIMAC emerged from the need for a user-friendly tool that would extract files from a forensic or raw disk image and deliver them to patrons through a researcher's web browser. After briefly mentioning others tools that aim to provide remote access to disk images or files—including OFSMount, Archivematica, and Gumshoe Jr.—the authors describe specifications for DIMAC’s design and implementation, the latter of which will appeal most to those readers with an intermediate knowledge of databases and programming. The article concludes by offering sample use cases for libraries, archives, and museums, including the extraction of files using DIMAC in order to prepare content for ingest into Archivematica. This article will be most helpful for repositories that are considering options for providing remote access to disk images and wish to do so using an open-source and relatively lean workflow.
Abstract: Between 2011 and 2013 the Getty Institutional Records and Archives made its first foray into the comprehensive ingest, arrangement, description, and delivery of unique born-digital material when it received oral history interviews generated by some of the Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. project partners. This case study touches upon the challenges and affordances inherent to this hybrid collection of audiovisual recordings, digital mixed-media files, and analog transcripts. It describes the Archives’ efforts to develop a basic processing workflow that applies the resource-management strategy commonly known as “MPLP” in a digital environment, while striving to safeguard the integrity and authenticity of the files, adhere to professional standards, and uphold fundamental archival principles. The study describes the resulting workflow and highlights a few of the inexpensive technologies that were successfully employed to automate or expedite steps in the processing of content that was transferred via easily-accessible media and consisted of current file formats.
Annotation: The article describes the Getty Institutional Records and Archives’ use of Ex Libris’ digital asset management system, DigiTool, to provide online access to a collection of oral history interviews. Several of the accessions were made available only via onsite computers at the Getty due to rights restrictions. These interviews are included in the digital repository but can only be accessed via a Getty IP address.
Abstract: None
Annotation: This report documents the processes and resources related to born-digital workflows at Duke University, University of North Carolina, and North Carolina State University. Topics covered include donor relations, appraisal, arrangement and description, and access. The appendix includes detailed information on how each university is providing access to born-digital material. Approaches described include establishing secure workstations for patron use and creating virtual reading rooms for remote researchers.
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Annotation: Yoneyama discusses, in some technical detail, a two-pronged approach to providing access to archival databases in the Danish National Archives. Two complementary search modules were developed in order to meet the needs of users with varying degrees of technical expertise. The Records Management System Module resulted in a simple, user-friendly search tool that provides access to the databases through a standardized set of search criteria. The Database Module, which requires knowledge of relational database structure, is a tool that provides users access to the raw databases with documentation and allows them to develop their own queries. The author discusses advantages and disadvantages of both approaches.