Best Practice Guidelines for Digital Collections
Curation
The "Best Practice Guidelines for Digital Collections" provides the essential, critical standards that all digital librarians, archivists and scholars should implement when designing a digital collection. The article also includes guidelines for adapting the standards according to the unique collections and mission of the archiving institution.
The article introduces best practices for developing selection criteria and for determining the personnel and technical resources required to secure and maintain the collection. Following an in-depth review of copyright issues, the article discusses the necessary elements and work-flow of a digital collections project. These elements include: metadata, quality control procedures, usability testing, web design, and technical specifications for media types and encoding.
Schreibman, S.
Carignan, Y.
Evander, J.
Gueguen, G.
Hanlon, A.
Murray, K.
Roper, J.
Ross, T.
University of Maryland Libraries
2007-05-04
Polk, Victoria
Journal Article
http://ourdigitalworld.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/DigitizationBestPractices_Schreibman.pdf
Guides to Good Practice
Web Archiving
This website was designed and produced by the UK Archaeology Data Service and Digital Antiquity in the US over the course of a two-year collaborative project. Designed to be a guide for good standards to follow in the world of digital archiving, it outlines what digital archiving is, the goals a project should have as well as a list of principles for archiving digital data. These outlines will help to guide and keep a new project on its feet and on the right path instead of wavering and turning to a different and unrelated purpose.
Additionally the website goes a step beyond simply giving goals and principles and gives two case studies; one in the loss of digital data and another for the study of data recovery. Both of these invaluable information for seasoned or budding archivists.
Archaeology Data Service, Digital Antiquity
Archaeology Data Service, Digital Antiquity
Donahue, Marisa
Website
A few too many? Some considerations on the digitisation of historical photographic archives
Archives
Baylis counters the idea that there are too many digitized historic photographs for public use by stating that there is too little information contextualizing these photographs. Using the Larcom Albums of 19th century Irish prison photographs housed in the New York Public Library’s photographic archive, Baylis reconstructs the original context of the photographs from each album, pointing out the differences in content, photographic style, technique, and description. She also recounts the history of the collection and the shift in meaning and context from when original owner, Larcom first organized and classified the prisoner photographs into an album to when albums transferred to a writer and eventually to the New York Public Library. Each album, while featuring prisoners from the same Irish prison within a similar time period, was unique in its categorization of criminal as opposed to political prisoners. However, because this information was recorded in a manuscript located elsewhere, the superficial visual similarities obscured the significant differences between the two albums. Since digitization of these photographs, they continue to be recreated in meaningful contexts far different from their origins. Genealogists interested in Irish ancestry are the predominant users of this collection, assembling individual photographs and records as an “assemblage” devoid of any “temporal anchoring.” Baylis notes that one of the results of digitization is the tendency to rely on photographs for surface meaning and visual reference, rather than recognize them as trace elements of a past, containing their own rich history and layers of meaning.
Baylis, Gail
MIT
2009-04-17
Polk, Victoria
Conference Proceeding
Copyright Issues Relevant to the Creation of a Digital Archive: A Preliminary Assessment
Copyright
Besek explains how the collecting and preserving of digital content poses challenges to the intellectual property rights that libraries and archives are use to following. A balance between copyright owners and users is an ongoing process; therefore, Besek offers a paper in which she describes the copyright rules and exceptions. She also focuses on issues those involved with libraries and archives might encounter if involved in the creation of a digital archive. Besek explains that numerous factors exist when determining the copyright implications for works being considered for inclusion in an archive. Some of these factors include: the purpose of the archive, its subject matter, the manner in which it will acquire materials, and who will have access to the archive, and from where, and under what conditions. The purpose of Besek’s paper is not to go in-depth about copyright, but to provide the reader and potential archive creator, with information about basic copyright matters, so that the creator might recognize areas of concern as he/she plans the archive.
Besek, June
Council on Library and Information Resources
2003
Polk, Victoria
Council on Library and Information Resources and the Library of Congress
Report
http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub112/pub112.pdf
Selecting and Appraising Archives and Manuscripts
Archives
Selecting and appraising archives and manuscripts is an introductory text describing the challenges and processes in selecting and appraising archives and manuscripts to ensure the maintained quality of an archive.
Boles, Frank
Society of American Archivists
May 2005
Branch, Justin
Book
ISBN: 9781931666114
Archiving Websites: General Considerations and Strategies
Web Archiving
The book Archiving Websites: General Considerations and Strategies by Niels Brügger is mainly for researchers, students, and others without special technical knowledge who wish to save a website for further study. This is for those who wish to start archiving to better preserve their research or studies without needing to have the technical skill some types of archiving require. It talks about what kind of archiving can be done on a standard computer and how to best utilize what you have on hand. The contents are also discussed from the standpoint that Internet research must be able to stabilise and save the object of its analysis.
Brügger, Niels
2005
Jordan Lunsford
Book
Archival Storage Standards
Archives
A new policy directive establishing the internal NARA structural, environmental control, fire safety, preservation, and security standards for appropriate archival storage conditions in NARA archival facilities
Carlin, John W.
National Archives and Records Administration
15 Feb. 2002
Korosec, Pat
NARA
Document
Organizing Archival Records: A Practical Method Of Arrangement And Description For Small Archives
Archives
This book equips non-professional archivists with the skills to tackle one of the most challenging tasks of archiving: arranging and describing archival materials. Carmicheal offers step-by-step guidance to understanding the purpose of organization and the essentials of how to do it. He covers the basic terms and theory of organization, and how to avoid some common pitfalls.
Carmicheal, David W.
10-12-2012
Elena Rogalle
Book
ISBN 978-0-7591-2169-0
Intellectual Property Rights for Digital Preservation
Copyright
Although the article is written for a British audience and the copyright laws and legislation regarding author/creator’s “moral rights” are different from the U.S. similar challenges from special interest groups and handling orphan works beset American archivists as they do British archivists. The author also recommends policies appropriate and practical for digital archivists in the U.S. Encouraging the creator to establish access and property rights before ingesting the materials and assisting the depositor with creating metadata are strategies that may enhance access without violating copyright infringement. Other strategies include risk management planning and carefully assessing the varieties of licensing required of each type of deposited object. Establishing “clear and ethical guidelines” for accessing or reusing the collection and incorporating descriptive, structural, and administrative metadata (legal references) should ameliorate risks of copyright and intellectual property infringement.
Charlesworth, Andrew
Digital Preservation Coalition
2012-12-02
Polk, Victoria
Digital Preservation Coalition 2012 and Andrew Charlesworth 2012
Report
Hurricane Sandy Highlights the Problems of Digital Archives
Archives
Eyebeam, the new media-focused nonprofit that takes its home in a cavernous Chelsea warehouse extremely close to the water, got hit hard by [Hurricane] Sandy. The water line on the inside of the building rose to three feet, and portions of the interior walls had to be removed. But the real damage wasn’t necessarily to architecture but to the space’s archives, which were stored on supposedly stable media formats like DVDs, harddrives, and tapes.
Chayka, Kyle
HyperAllergic.com
20 Nov. 2012
DeJesus, Angela M.
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Website