Born Digital: The 21st Century Archive in Practice and Theory

Born Digital: The 21st Century Archive in Practice and Theory

Archives

Digital libraries, museums, and archives have discovered a beneficial partnership with law enforcement. Digital forensics as a method for extracting “unaltered evidence” and establishing “verifiable and repeatable examinations” of the data has been adopted by several digital archives ingesting and processing born digital artefacts. In a panel presentation featuring noted archivists, librarians, and curators, the authors discuss the application of digital forensics and the consequential effects on archival practices. While maintaining the provenance and original context of the born digital object’s origin and use is still of paramount importance, the authors view the computer as the creator’s workstation and a “complex archival object” in itself. Developing finding aids and a database for recreating the virtual work-study requires not just technical facility and familiarity with the author’s work, but also involves understanding the needs and interests of researchers and scholars. All digital files associated with the author’s final editions are considered integral to understanding the creative process and thus, archivists are also collaborating with users of the archive to develop a prototype for ingesting born digital objects. An additional benefit of applying digital forensics to archiving is learning how to represent unpublished, digital ephemera, opening the possibility for representing creative works by marginalized populations.

Redwine, Gabriela

Kirschenbaum, Matthew

Olson, Michael

Farr, Erika

Centre for Computing in the Humanities

2010

Polk, Victoria

2010 Centre for Computing in the Humanities

Journal Article