1. Topics in Born Digital Archiving
Digital Stewardship Curriculum

2. Thoughts on Digital Files
Working with donors
Collections, Digitization, and Digital Preservation Policies
Today
Converting Formats
Write Blockers
Archiving
-Thinking about digital donations, working with donors becomes incredibly important. Easy to donate lots of uneeded or unorganized files. Sitting down with them and going through the files.
-Think about physical and digital files in all policies, even if they are not being donated yet
-A few topics that we have touched on with Digital Preservation

3. Converting Formats
Following standards for digitization/digital preservation, updating
Found files on computer, born digital
Transferred files from flash drives, hard drives, floppy disks, CD-ROMs, etc.
Also called “Normalizing”
-you should have some standards picked out - Sustainability of Digital Formats: Planning for Library of Congress Collections and others standards organizations – update as needed
-These standards apply to files that come into your collections in different ways.
-When you digitize original physical items - you can decide the format, but digitized content might not be all of your collections
-Others “born digital” ---- found files
-Donated
-Transferred off obsolete media
-Another word for “converting to a format that fits your standards” is “normalizing”

4. Example
image files Find a lot of high quality .png files -- convert them to TIFFs, then JPEGs
Audio files - FLAC files -- convert them to WAV, then to mp3s
Plus quality standards (not just the extension, other factors)

5. Documents PDF/A PDF/A format Most document files Embed metadata, fonts
Instructions in binder
PDF/A
Documents
-things that you don’t need users to interact with, only view
-can include embedded metadata, save fonts along with files

6. Normalizing Files Previously discussed Know what your standards are
Digital Preservation - File Access
Digitization Workflows
Know what your standards are
Know how to convert
Creation software - MS Word, MS Powerpoint, Adobe Acrobat, Audacity, Photoshop or GIMP
Conversion software, especially for a/v
Browser extensions, apps (be careful!)
This is a very important part of Digital Preservation - keeping long term access to files, making sure they are the same file types and can be opened with software
Standards - document your choices, update over time
Tools to convert (will depend on media type)
Decide if you will need to be able to convert in bulk
Note on video - tried a few different software programs for one specific type (.webm), none of them worked! So I ended up using a browser extension

7. Write Blockers Authenticity Hardware - need appropriate connectors
Software - more variables, more complicated
Transfer data from a drive without accidentally changing the drive contents.
Can only read and copy, can’t delete or modify
-want several other things in place first
-give you more certainty that you or your computer will not accidentally change the file when plugging in a drive or copying over
-hardware seems preferred
-these were developed in law enforcement - where it was really important that authenticity can be proven

8. Weibetech $350

9. Digital Intelligence - Tableau

10. Quarantining New Transfers
Risk of viruses on storage media - especially flash drives
Non-networked computer
Return media if viruses are found, ask people to clean and return
Or get rid of viruses yourself
Since these different types of donated media might contain viruses, you don’t want them to infect your whole network

11. Quarantining New Transfers, cont.
Run virus checks using an antivirus software
Avast
AVG
Windows Defender (built in to Windows)
Malwarebytes (for Windows and Mac)
Mount media, run AV scan
You can use different type of antivirus software to check for viruses and fix problems
For donated media, but also for your regular office computer setup
If you are using it on media, plug in then run scan on drive

12. Email Archiving Simple Saving individual emails
PDF, text, html, rtf, .eml
Convert to PDF/A
Complex
Saving an entire account
.mbox, .pst
ePADD
Simple
-donor files
-one time saves
-collection of s
-Saving every from an account - exporting
-Think about how you will view and manage in long term
-hundreds or thousands, probably want to think about some software
-think about what the material is,

13. ePADD Open source software 4 layers or steps
Appraisal Module
Processing Module
Discovery Module
Delivery Module
From Stanford University Libraries
---Needs: hard drive space, would need web server if you want the discovery and delivery modules to be publically accessible, ability to do virus scans
-Appraisal (done WITH donor) - browse, review, edit correspondents, remove sensitive s, identify PII, choose a specific folder, then export to processing
-Processing (archivist) - metadata, making sure correspondents line up, checking over appraisal steps
-Discovery (user) - navigating, browsing, searching - only people, date and subject
-Delivery (archivist and user) - more browsing and searching, see full messages and attachments, requesting and delivering

16. Can use the same function to organize - provide annotation

17. Resolving correspondents - multiple John Smiths, or one person that has multiple names

18. Data analysis

19. Discussion Read the scenario on your handout Think about:
What steps could you do now?
What would you ideally like to do?
Consider both planning/policy changes and day-to-day steps
Discuss for 20 minutes, use whiteboard, be ready to share
-So those topics, converting formats, write blocking, and archiving all have some overlap between managing digital archives and thinking about digital preservation.
-These are all things that may come up in your day-to-day jobs (finding legacy files, people donating flash drives or hard drives, or having to deal with messages)
-So I created some case studies for you to think through