Page History

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A.   Simon Wilson (Hull University Archives)

Wiki Markup\* After *William Kilbride's William Kilbride’s (DPC)* brief introduction, *SW* spoke about the structure of the day and gave a brief outline of the [AIMS Project|http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/aims/] Project (An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship of born-digital archives). The event's event’s structure was inspired by the structure of the [Unconference|AIMS:Home] which AIMS organised in Charlottesville in May.  \[This 2 day event was heavily shaped by the delegates themselves with considerable sharing of experience etc.\of the Unconference which AIMS organised in Charlottesville in May.  [This 2 day event was heavily shaped by the delegates themselves with considerable sharing of experience etc.]

* Within the AIMS Project, Hull University Archives acknowledge their beginners' beginners’ status and decided to suggest Good Practice (rather than Best Practice). This also took into account that no single solution can be applied to multiple institutions.

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* Most digital material at the Wellcome Library is part of hybrid collections rather than purely digital – including hybrid collections that haven't haven’t yet been discovered – the problem of discs hidden in boxes of paper.

* Negotiating with existing depositors for their digital material. Problems arise with large organisations where there is an efficient records management system for paper, but digital material goes through different channels, i.e. 'that's IT's problem'‘that’s IT’s problem’. How will we find a way around this?

* Different timescale with digital material - having to 'talent spot' ‘talent spot’ potential depositors to build a relationship with them - but how sustainable is gambling on the future success of your chosen academic/author/politician?

* The issue of trust and the idea that 'anyone ‘anyone can see it' it’ – a different perception to paper material which is available to any visitor in the Reading Room. Our brand is Trust in handling any archives, and we will have to convince depositors that they can trust us with digital.

* Scrutinising archival processes for born-digital highlights the extent to which some processes for paper material have got 'baggy'‘baggy’.

* Discussion of appraisal and 'pre‘pre-cataloguing'cataloguing’. New digital accessions currently reside on a shared drive and are only ingested into the repository at the point of cataloguing. This will not be sustainable as backlog grows. The simple solution of describing at a series level brings the risk of restricted files becoming public (when we can't can’t eyeball everything)..

* What constitutes a ‘reasonable producible unit’? Swiss National Archives say 30GB! [Susan Thomas’s presentation later showed an example producible unit of 10 files Wiki Markup\* What constitutes a 'reasonable producible unit'? Swiss National Archives say 30GB\! \[*Susan Thomas's* presentation later showed an example producible unit of 10 files\].

* Consideration of ISAD(G) fields that may need adjustment: Physical Description (a description of the media the object originally resided on rather than content), Extent (needs to indicate what the user is up against - number of files rather than GB), Date (date created/last modified? i.e. the Photocopy problem).

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* Tim Gollins - whilst digital material is 'just stuff'‘just stuff’, the significant difference is the vast volumes of digital material. How will we cope when we can't 'eyeball' can’t ‘eyeball’ all incoming material?

* Chris H agreed that sensitivity will have to be road-tested. Wellcome Library decided on a policy not to 'undelete' ‘undelete’ or routinely crack passwords – to ingest only what the depositor intends to deposit. SW - to build trust, we should tell depositors that we are capable of recovering deleted material.  Further discussion on 'undelete'‘undelete’: general agreement that with permission, undeleting would be ethical. Jeremy John agreed - but equally we definitely need to know from the depositor what we are receiving. Undelete is thin end of the wedge; TG - tracked changes in Word - could recover superseded material and risk authenticity.

* ER - LSE use undelete on a case-by-case basis. The 'locked‘locked-box' box’ scenario: there is no point is having material you cannot access – would decline to accept material if they couldn't couldn’t actually get at it. TG: Need a classification of the minimum possible action required in order to accept an object. Richard Boulderstone mentioned the three-tier classification system in use at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France ranging from 'don't ‘don’t understand, can't view' to 'can can’t view’ to ‘can understand and view'view’.

Volume

* JB - we don't don’t have to accept whole hard drives of material – in the paper world would try to get depositor to undertake some sorting. Jacky Cox pointed out that most institutions would not have resources /inclination to sort through years' years’ worth of emails. Catherine Hardman raised the importance of selling the value of the institution and of born-digital archives in order to make it an attractive option – outreach must be a part of collection development.

Pre-ingest work:

* Many institutions' institutions’ workflow: to receive, do basic manifest, assessment and quarantine, then put in 'temporary' ‘temporary’ storage until full cataloguing can take place. Do we need to develop a different workflow – to enable us to get stuff into a repository quickly?

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* JB --In most cases the depositor will still have their own copies of the digital material. Chris H said Wellcome Library encourage depositors to consider digital deposits as being the same as handing over the only copy. No other solution apart from to trust in our depositors not to pass on additional copies? ER and Chris H said that both LSE and Wellcome prefer depositor to transfer ownership – we also create authenticity by our commitment to preserve material – the 'top copy'‘top copy’. Chris H - 'death ‘death of the original' original’ is more a philosophical problem than a practical one, though may be market issues in the future.

* Grant Young asked about copyright in digital material. ER - LSE's LSE’s deposit agreement includes two strands of copyright clearance, one for preservation copies and one for access. If the depositor does not agree, accepting the digital material is pointless. Several speakers pointed out that many of the same weaknesses in copyright law apply to paper archives too > risk management is the only option.

Part Three: Lunchtime Open Floorunmigrated-wiki-markup

*A.  * *Grant   Grant Young: brief discussion of Plato and the Evaluating Plato in Cambridge \ [EPIC\] project*

EPIC is exploring the feasibility of using Plato for Cambridge University's University’s Digital Repository. The project worked on a set of word-processed research documents to test migration paths and identify vulnerable formats. In order to identify key objectives they asked their depositors and users for input on what the significant properties of the documents were.

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* The creators are keen to receive feedback and anyone who would like to help evaluate Curator's Curator’s Workbench through the user group should contact NG.

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* Digital material is quickly ingested into the BEAM Preservation Store after receipt. They then identify the content , appraise it and decide on what is 'in scope' ‘in scope’ – to what extent passwords will be broken, browser histories exported etc.

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* Creating curatorial digital objects (photography of creator's creator’s landscape, panorama's of creator's panorama’s of creator’s office and interviews – which can be linked to objects), digitised personal objects (images of media) and Virtual Archival Computing (emulating).

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* Susan Corrigall and Owain Roberts asked about photographing the media and whether the original media is disposed of once ingested. ST explained that photos are for cataloguers' cataloguers’ reference and are stored as a piece of metadata alongside the file.

* TG brought up the issue of dealing with material stored on the cloud or webmail services and whether there would be authenticity issues. ST said that they had successfully exported Wendy Cope's Cope’s webmail account and William Kilbride suggested that virtualising a desktop would enable one to drop in various services from the cloud.

* JB considered the archivist's archivist’s role to portray the structure of the organisation/depositor to the user – with digital personal papers the user can explore the existing structure themselves . Jacky Cox pointed out that the archivist's archivist’s role in describing record-keeping methods is challenged since lots of people do not have any for digital material.

* RB suggested use of web 2.0 as an opportunity for the public to help produce metadata through crowdsourcing (though a minimum level of description would be necessary to facilitate this). TG described the need to get the community excited about the content – to consider it purely as 'cheap metadata' ‘cheap metadata’ would be short-sighted. JB - example of the Self-Archiving Legacy Toolkit (SALT) at Stanford which allows this to happen purely between the depositor and the repository.

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* OR discussed the current mentality that we have to follow up every single IPR and copyright issue before we 'liberate' ‘liberate’ the material and allow access – is there a way to manage risk and produce material earlier without contravening legislation? RB suggested that we may have to accept that access will have to wait until we have solved these issues. Catherine H – ADS's depositors' ADS’s depositors’ keen to get stuff online but are unaware of behind-the-scenes work.

* ER - The forensic team extract content from depositor's depositor’s storage medium then make it accessible to cataloguers for their work. Only add descriptive metadata at series level – but give each digital object (file) an individual reference/'shelf mark'’shelf mark’.

Part Five: Discovery and Access:

A.  Catherine Hardman (Archaeology Data Service)unmigrated-wiki-markup

\* ADS is a purely digital archive which is embedded in a profession already comfortable with sharing its research and donating to archives. ADS makes \ [almost\] all of its holdings available online for free download, and hopes that by selling itself to its users they will eventually become depositors themselves.

* The OASIS project makes unpublished fieldwork reports (grey literature) available online - these would otherwise be inaccessible. OASIS created an online upload form which allows contractors to upload reports directly, cutting out the steps of sending reports from contractor to local authority archive to national authority (plus backlogs at each step).

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* Technical issues for some files/images – work on a 'best effort' ‘best effort’ caveat

* Old backlogs from before OASIS mean that metadata has to be hand-created, a time-consuming process

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* TG started by demonstrating TNA's TNA’s new search facility (currently in beta) -- currently for paper, the work has applications for digital archives - will be easier to integrate paper and digital in one interface.

* Entries have been tagged with up to 6 taxonomies allowing quick and effective filtering (e.g. by date range) and some results have also tagged with geo-locations. This search function stems from consideration of users' users’ needs, based on Amazon and Ebay.

* Most users just want to access the 'stuff'‘stuff’, not necessarily by navigating the intellectual hierarchy. Still described in EAD but stepping away from EAD technology. Treating records as information assets rather than physical objects. Collections hierarchies are still there but they have been relegated, aimed at academic researchers.  

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* It is all just stuff, but we're we’re more concerned about the challenges in dealing with digital stuff

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* Our role is mediator between user and depositor?

* We don't don’t yet have an examples to relate to – i.e. Salman Rushdie is only visible depositor and no mature research community yet

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* TG - Intangibility of digital material. Need to replicate how the eye 'sees' ‘sees’ stuff. Otherwise you are just 'feeling' ‘feeling’ the documents. Forensic tools 'open ‘open the box' box’ and let you see the documents

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