Page History

...

This is somewhat complementary to Alison's topic above. I want to talk about how we fully realize born-digital materials as normal components of a special collections and/or archives workflows. Many repositories are hiring specialized staff for born-digital. I want to ask the group and discuss how we move to digital as the norm within our competencies, workflows and policies. Part of my strategy in a large, multi-special collection library has been to empower archivists (curators, technical services and public services staff). We have designed basic procedures and user-friendly tools so they can begin to feel comfortable with handling born-digital materials. I would like to hear what other repositories are doing to engage archivists in this area.

Questions of scale and forward planning

Susan Thomas, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford

As born-digital archives become business as usual in our institutions how do we ensure that our approaches and workflows are appropriate for all of our collections, regardless of their scale or import? I'm specifically interested in how this applies to accession, appraisal, arrangement, sensitivity review and description. I'd also like to get a sense of how institutions are planning processing projects involving born-digital archives - how much time is factored in for the 'digital activities' and how is that being costed? What do we need to know to plan a project accurately and how feasible is it?