Propose a topic

Propose topics

DEADLINE: FRIDAY 29 APRIL

In addition to a 5 minute lightening talk we also require everybody to propose a topic. This does not necessarily mean that you are an expert or that you are willing to lead a discussion on this topic. Proposed topics could entail:

• topics you would like to discuss in more detail with the group - eg a problem (or a solution) you have encountered
• an aspect of your work that you would like to share with the group (please bring examples of workflow, documentation etc with you)
• a topic they would like to learn more about

After the deadline we will then turn this into a list and ask people to indicate their preferences/interests ahead of the event and use this to shape the discussions.

In each please explain your level of knowledge or experience and comment on the proposals. Please use the following format:

Short phrase summary of topic

Name, Affiliation

Paragraph-long statement describing topic

Proposals

SIP Creation and Rubymatica

Tom Laudeman, University of Virginia (AIMS Project)

I would like to demonstrate Rubymatica and discuss issues related to processing of files to make them suitable for a Submission Information Package (SIP). I am the author of Rubymatica. It is a Ruby port of the SIP creation phase of Archivematica. My efforts were supported by the AIMS team, especially the digital archivists. (Many thanks to the Archivematica people for blazing the trail.) A key question is: How much processing should we do before initial assessment? The demo is just a few minutes, but I hope the discussion will be lively.

Describing Electronic Records: What's Useful to the Researcher?

Mark Matienzo, Yale University (AIMS)

I'd like to discuss what people think is useful and practical information to incorporate about electronic records into archival description. A good example of this is extent - is extent in terms of data size (e.g. megabytes/gigabytes) sufficient and appropriate? Are file/directory counts useful to researchers, or are they potentially misleading? I'd also be curious how people are approaching description of records like websites as well - whether they're describing sections of a site's information architecture, and what other information would be crucial to provide in a access system for archival description.

Accessioning, Processing, Delivering, and Preserving Emails

Peter Chan, Stanford University (AIMS)

I would like to know what tools people use to accession, process, deliver and preserve emails. I am also curious to know what do accessioning, processing, delivering and preserving mean to different institutions. I saw emails being printed on paper, described in finding aids and delivered in a reading room. I also found emails presented in visually simulating graphs. I hope to share the tools I found useful and to discuss how far archivists should do on emails.

How informed are our depositors?

Simon Wilson, Hull University (AIMS)

I would like to discuss the topic of how informed are depositors are (or are not) about born-digital archives and the critical difference regarding their expectations and assumptions relating to the preservation and access of born-digital material compared to traditional paper archives. What do they expect of us?  How can we ensure that their expectations are reasonable?  

Collaboration and Institutions?

Gretchen Gueguen, University of Virginia (AIMS)

I would like to talk about how institutions can effectively collaborate in the creation/management of born-digital archives. Each institution has it's own quirks and local practices, but to be really effective we need to figure out how to share the burden. In a larger sense we could also discuss what such collaboration would really mean, just sharing information? infrastructure? development of tools? Collaborations take effort, so what would make them worthwhile?

SIP formation procedures - What needs to happen before our systems "Receive SIP"?

Courtney C. Mumma, City of Vancouver Archives (Archivematica developers)

What work needs to be done before a donor transfer is ready for processing? Archivematica is on the verge of expanding to include SIP-preparation procedures prepending the processes currently packaged in release 0.7. A certain amount of analysis and configuration needs to occur before the SIP is in a state that it can be processed and transformed into an AIP. At the very least, formation of the SIP from a donation requires accessioning and administrative tasks, forensic imaging and analysis, log creation, metadata creation, malware checking, partial arrangement, appraisal, identification and unlocking of encryption, identification of confidential or restricted information, assignment of identifiers, etc. We've outlined a number of draft requirements on our project wiki (http://artefactual.com/wiki/index.php?title=SIP_Creation ) and you can see Artefactual's plans for Archivematica on their development roadmap (http://archivematica.org/wiki/index.php?title=Development_roadmap ), but I think it would be useful to compare notes with others who have "pre-Ingest" workflows and experiment with tools they are using.

Examples of Patron Use

Matthew Kirschenbaum, University of Maryland

I would like to discuss known examples of patrons working with materials in born-digital collections. What case studies are already out there? What examples can we point to of born-digital materials that have been consulted and cited by scholars in their work? What wisdom is available anecdotally from those scholars who have worked with born-digital materials, either online or by visiting a collection? What provisions have institutions made for researcher access? How can researchers be educated about both the potential of born-digital materials, and the kind of problems and challenges they should expect to encounter?

Trust: Perceptions and Demonstrations

Ed Fay, London School of Economics

Trusted repositories have been discussed for many years, and attributes proposed based on OAIS (TRAC, nestor et al.) with current work taking the proposed certifications towards ISO standards. I would like to discuss whether these demonstrations meet the requirements or expectations of some or all of our user constituencies (technologists/system builders, depositors, curators, end-users, organisational management) - in essence whether the demonstrations match the perceptions. A further aspect which I think is worthy of discussion is how digital trust relates to traditional trust. Curating digital material is only an extension or format shift of a mission which organisations have been carrying out for many years. Rarely do depositors require demonstrations of strong-room standards-compliance (e.g. BS5454) so is trusted repository status an exercise purely for the specialists? Will trust continue to be placed in the organisation regardless of technical demonstrations? What, if anything, do trusted certifications need to demonstrate that they are not already?

Capturing People's Digital Contexts:  original order, appraisal and description.

Catherine Hobbs, Library and Archives Canada

Creators of archives are living digital or hybrid lives in terms of the media of their records and they are also living with portable devices.  Archivists have traditionally served to capture the context of record-keeping and this can have very specific shades within the lives of individuals.  

I would like to discuss how we interpret original order and what we ask creators about their record-creating habits and decision-making with the digital realm (e.g.  Perhaps we shouldn't assume the same priority for records that are digitally abandoned but yet kept somewhere on a hard drive).  How can we glean the creator's perspective on their own record-keeping and life with technology during the site visit and appraisal, and then transfer these elements to description?  We can't rely on automatically harvested metadata or even emulation to capture these aspects for us.  New approaches may involve asking the right questions, changing appraisal values, expanding description or even modelling relationships between technologies and documents in ways that make apparent the personal context of these records.

Training our domnor/creators

dave thompson, Wellcome Library

I would like to discuss the problems that we have in engaging donor/creators to transfer born digital material to our library.  Many of our existing donors create material digitally, but continue to prefer to print it for transfer to us. Many are organisations, we do have individual donors.  Many have been passing their material (Physical)  to us for ages.  We have spoken with our donor/creator community about the transfer of digital material, in principle most see the advantages and opportunities.  But few do it. Somehow it is too difficult.  We provide information on the digital transfer process, we explain how we'd like the process to work. We meet to discuss the means of transfer, we provide portable hard drives. We explain that we don't scatter their material willy nilly across the internet for all to see.  It's difficult to know what else to do!  I'd be interested in discussing the expereinces of others.  Is engagement with donor/creators and their digital material much more time consuming?   Are donor/crators much more 'possessive' of their digital work? Is it that they haven't managed to organise their material digital in the same way that they have their physical? Is there a perception that digital material is somehow more ephemeral and less 'important'?

Ethical issues surrounding acquisition and access to e-MSS

Helen Broderick

I am interested in discussing ethical and privacy issues attached to born-digital archives and in particular whether any new or different issues are raised by this different type of record. For example do different privacy considerations need to be made for emails that are not necessary for paper correspondence?  Should all email addresses be redacted as a rule? Are researchers any more likely to email an author than they are to visit their home if both addresses can be found in their archive? 

Do these new challenges mean that archivists will increasingly be called upon to learn new skills or work more closely with digital archivists or IT departments? Whilst time restrictions on paper archives can be easily administered by archivists the situation is more complex when restricting material within born-digital collections.

Managing "Restricted Access"

Seth Shaw, Duke University

How do we identify, preserve, describe, and provide access materials to "restricted materials?" Many times donors give us material with very sensitive content with varying degrees of awareness. Software is available both to uncover deleted records but also to identify PII (personally identifiable information) of donor and others but these usually miss some things. Do we place spacial, temporal, or group based access restrictions on the materials we can identify as restricted? How do we manage access to originals, redactions, and/or derivative access copies?

Using Forensic Software to assign Metadata to Born Digital Archives

Peter Chan, Stanford University (AIMS)

The heterogeneous file formats and content types in most born digital archives post a serious challenge to archivists in assigning metadata to individual digital objects. Stanford University Libraries has been exploring the use of forensic software since April 2010 to generate technical metadata and to assign descriptive and administrative metadata to several born digital collections. The technical metadata includes checksum, file format, file size, file creation date, last modification date, and last accession date; descriptive metadata includes archival context (series, subseries, etc.), subject headings, and source media, and administrative metadata includes primarily access restrictions. I would like to share this experience and to receive feedback from other people.