Applying Theoretical Archival Principles and Policies to Actual Born Digital Collections LEIGH ROSIN | Digital Archivist | National Library of New Zealand LIBER | June 2013

Photographs Cartoons Manuscripts & private papers Oral histories & interviews Websites Electronic publications Music

Mid 1990s NLNZ starts acquiring born digital collections 2003 NLNZ Act passed. Outlines our purpose “to preserve, protect, develop, and make accessible…the collections of that library in perpetuity”. Sept 2008 Use case Theatre company records received Oct 2008 National Digital Heritage Archive goes live 2011 Joint digital preservation policy initiative begins 2012 Preconditioning Policy established 2013 Processing of theatre company records complete

PRECONDITIONING POLICY “…describe the limits of change that can be introduced to digital content from the time it is brought within the control of Archives or the Library to its acceptance into the preservation system”.

“All changes must be reversible”. “All changes must have…documentation detailing the reason for the preconditioning [as well as]…a system- based provenance note that clearly describes the change that has been made to the file ”. PRECONDITIONING POLICY

RELEVANT ARCHIVAL PRINCIPLES ORIGINAL ORDER PROVENANCE AUTHENTICITY CONSERVATION

Scripts & production notes 7 boxes | 1.75 linear metres | 55 floppy disks Box office, correspondence, contracts Press releases, reviews, posters CASE STUDY: Theatre company records, Interior of the De Luxe Theatre in Lower Hutt. Burt, Gordon Onslow Hilbury, :Negatives. Ref: 1/ F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.

FILE ANALYSIS 76% of files had some kind of technical issue (700/923): Missing file extensions Illegal/Undesirable characters in file name Incorrect file extensions

APPLYING PRECONDITIONING ACTIONS Kieron doc. 5/5/92 [ORIGINAL file name] Kieron doc-5_5_92.mcw [NEW file name]

002_File extension was added: The file was submitted by the donor without a file extension. An.mcw extension was added to this filename by the Preservation Analyst as it has been identified as Microsoft Word for Macintosh document version _special character(s) were removed from the file name: The file name was submitted with a forward slash as part of the file name. On the recommendation of the preservation analyst these have been removed and replaced with underscores. 003_Special character(s) were removed from the file name: The file name was submitted with a full stop as part of the file name. On the recommendation of the Preservation Analyst this has been removed and replaced with a hyphen. DOCUMENTING PRECONDITIONING ACTIONS

UPLOADING THE FILES Ingest tool dependencies: All files in a single deposit must share the SAME provenance, descriptive and administrative metadata. In order to capture a file’s original path, the file must be loaded from within its original folder structure.

UPLOADING THE FILES

The collection, in numbers:

LESSONS LEARNED Disk image / disk inventory / ingest report Tools & Technology Policies, tools & processes

“The unexpected will continue to challenge and surprise repositories acquiring and managing born- digital materials, despite reasonable efforts at creating clear and actionable policies” Born Digital: Guidance for Donors, Dealers, and Archival Repositories (2013)

Full paper available at: NDHA wiki Full paper: Contact: All photos: M. Beatty / L. Rosin