Applying Theoretical Archival Principles and Policies to Actual Born Digital

Collections

LEIGH ROSIN | Digital Archivist | National Library of New ZealandLIBER | June 2013

Photographs

Cartoons

Manuscripts & private papers

Oral histories & interviews

Websites

Electronic publications

Music

Mid 1990sNLNZ starts acquiring born digital collections

2003

NLNZ Act passed. Outlines our purpose “to preserve, protect, develop, and make accessible…the collections of that library in perpetuity”.

Sept 2008Use case Theatre company records received

Oct 2008

National Digital Heritage Archive goes live

2011

Joint digital preservation policy initiative begins

2012Preconditioning Policy established

2013Processing of theatre company records complete

PRECONDITIONING POLICY

“…describe the limits of change that can be introduced to digital content from the time it is brought within the control of Archives or the Library to its acceptance into the preservation system”.

“All changes must be reversible”.

“All changes must have…documentation detailing the reason for the preconditioning [as well as]…a system-based provenance note that clearly describes the change that has been made to the file ”.

PRECONDITIONING POLICY

RELEVANT ARCHIVAL PRINCIPLES

ORIGINAL ORDER

PROVENANCE

AUTHENTICITY

CONSERVATION

Scripts & production notes

7 boxes | 1.75 linear metres | 55 floppy disks

Box office, correspondence, contracts

Press releases, reviews, posters

CASE STUDY: Theatre company records,1990-2008

Interior of the De Luxe Theatre in Lower Hutt. Burt, Gordon Onslow Hilbury, 1893-1968 :Negatives. Ref: 1/1-015958-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.

FILE ANALYSIS

76% of files had some kind of technical issue (700/923):

Missing file extensions

Illegal/Undesirable characters in file name

Incorrect file extensions

APPLYING PRECONDITIONING ACTIONS

Kieron doc. 5/5/92 [ORIGINAL file name]Kieron doc-5_5_92.mcw [NEW file name]

002_File extension was added: The file was submitted by the donor without a file extension. An .mcw extension was added to this filename by the Preservation Analyst as it has been identified as Microsoft Word for Macintosh document version 4.0.

003_special character(s) were removed from the file name: The file name was submitted with a forward slash as part of the file name. On the recommendation of the preservation analyst these have been removed and replaced with underscores.

003_Special character(s) were removed from the file name: The file name was submitted with a full stop as part of the file name. On the recommendation of the Preservation Analyst this has been removed and replaced with a hyphen.

DOCUMENTING PRECONDITIONING ACTIONS

UPLOADING THE FILES

Ingest tool dependencies:

All files in a single deposit must share the SAME provenance, descriptive and administrative metadata.

In order to capture a file’s original path, the file must be loaded from within its original folder structure.

UPLOADING THE FILES

923

118

52

1530

The collection, in numbers:

LESSONS LEARNED

Disk image / disk inventory / ingest report

Tools & Technology

Policies, tools & processes

“The unexpected will continue to challenge and surprise repositories acquiring and managing born-digital materials, despite reasonable efforts at creating clear and actionable policies” Born Digital: Guidance for Donors, Dealers, and Archival Repositories (2013)

• Full paper available at: NDHA wiki

Full paper: http://ndha-wiki.natlib.govt.nz/ndha/pages/ReadingResources

Contact: leigh.rosin@dia.govt.nz

All photos: M. Beatty / L. Rosin