Byte into history; digitial media in archives Elizabeth Estbergs ACT Government Reference Archivist 31 March 2012

Vocabulary Preservation : the protection of cultural property through activities that minimize chemical and physical deterioration and damage, and that prevent loss of information. The primary goal of preservation is to prolong the existence of cultural material.

Preservation

Vocabulary 2 Preventative conservation : action taken to retard or prevent deterioration of or damage to cultural material by control of its environment. This is done through the formulation and implementation of policies and procedures for the following: –Appropriate environmental conditions –Storage –Exhibition –Reformatting / duplication

What is a legacy record? –existing accumulations of older records, created by an organisation in the past or inherited from another organisation during a transfer of functions; –Or; –Old stuff acquired from someone else that you want or need to keep Legacy records

What forms do they take? –Paper records –Cylinder audio discs – Edison phonographs –Floppy discs –Polaroid photographs –CDs

Storage Environmental requirements Transmittal packaging Contaminant examination Location tracking Labelling Physical storage standard Risk mitigation

Retrieval

Strategies Risk assessment Resource usage Incremental progress Significance assessment ublications/significance2-0/index.html ublications/significance2-0/index.html

Digital images Floppy discs CDs/DVDs as photographic storage –Manufacture of CDs/DVDs –How do you read the CDs/DVDs in 5, 10, 20 years time? –Limitations of digital images Metadata They do not exist

Loss of digital records Back ups unlabelled Indexed or labelled incorrectly Someone else now has the laptop Changed software Improperly migrated Proprietary format Large collection Lost thumb drive, CD, DVD

How to Free online course /course/welcome.html Pay someone /11/17/a-prime-example-of-regional-history

Next Steps What you need to do is: –Test all your digital media to see if you can still see the images –Label all the digital media –Index all the digital media –Develop a migration strategy for digital media

Contacts For any additional information please contact; Elizabeth Estbergs ACT Government Reference Archivist Ph Fax