Digital Preservation Q&A - Recent questions tagged acquisition

What are current best practices for acquiring & preserving Google Docs?

Mon, 05 Feb 2018 18:56:07 +0000

What are current (2018) best practices for acquiring and preserving records created in Google's cloud platform?

In particular, are there methods that preserve the rich metadata around document creation, editing, and commenting that exist in the native apps?

Should data repositories remove illegal characters from filenames?

Thu, 13 Nov 2014 20:10:42 +0000

Should normalizing filenames be a standard curation practice in data repositories? There is consensus that file names without illegal characters are better for interoperability and long-term preservation, but changing a filename could immediately break a program that relied on a certain name to operate

In my mind, filename normalization falls in the same realm as format normalization - we normalize/migrate formats for more sustainable long term preservation/access. Many preservation polices address this with data producers at the time of deposit.

If filename normalization occurs, what sorts of standards are available to address this? Simply inserting a (-) in place of a whitespace seems unsustainable and potentially problematic. ISO 9660? Are there any repositories out there activly addressing this issue?

Best Practices for Accessioning Email from Web Applications?

Tue, 30 Sep 2014 21:02:40 +0000

People increasingly use web applications to manage their email. So going forward, there is a good chance that many donors to archives will not have any local copies of their email messages. What issues should archives consider in accessioning email from these third party web based systems? Specifically, is it better to have a donor export their email and submit it? Or is it better for an organization to ask for their account information to connect to the account via POP or IMAP or something and slurp in all the messages?

When should Archives Complement the Acquisition of a Personal Papers Collection with Web Archiving?

Wed, 13 Aug 2014 20:26:01 +0000

At this point, authors, scientists, politicains and others who's papers are aquired by archives, share photos on flickr, write blogs, have personal websites, etc. That is, asside from their papers stored and organized in their physical or digital files, or their corraspondance in their email accounts, and other sets of private unpublished materials they also have a range of ephemerial likely at risk materials that are currently avalible on the public web. In what situations does it make sense for an archives to use something like Archive-It to aquire these sites? As a plus, it would be great to have actual examples of cases where archives have decided it made sense to complement the aquisition of a personal papers collection with web archiving.

What are the content appraisal at scale practices that are most useful?

Fri, 01 Aug 2014 16:39:03 +0000

What content appraisal and collection policies are currently being used for evaluating collections at scale? How are libraries, archives, and museums deciding to collect large quantities of data for preservation? Are data usage reports influencing content collection and appraisal decisions?

Is simple fixity information valuable to digital stewards?

Wed, 23 Jul 2014 14:07:37 +0000

From #digpres14:

The BagIt specification includes an oxsum in the transfer materials. This oxsum is the size of the bitstream divided by the number of files. Why is simple fixity information like this included when each file also includes a checksum, a much more precise measure of fixity?

More generally, why do we care about this low-level fixity information?

Should collecting institutions keep external storage media once the digital content has been extracted?

Wed, 23 Jul 2014 13:33:11 +0000

The person who asked this question at #digpres14 was specifically asking about external storage media used for transfer rather than, say, external storage media in manuscript collections that are possibly collection items themselves.

What format questions to ask and considerations to make in acquisition of born digital architectural drawings?

Mon, 07 Jul 2014 19:13:13 +0000

Libraries and Archives that collect and aquire in architicture and design often collect both finished architectural drawings and archives containing drafts and revisions of those drawings as well as prints and photographs. Given that drafting has become a principly digital afair, with its own set of special formats, what kinds of formats should libraries be seeking? Spesifcially, in what situations does it make sense to aquire original files from idyosyncratic production formats (DWG,DXF, etc), and in what cases does it make sense to try and get exports of computer aided design documents into other formats, like PDF?

In particular, I would be interested in what questions and considerations a curator should think through regarding 1) sustainability of formats and 2) richness of the documentation of the architectural/design record?

How should you scope a crawl for web archiving online discussion forums

Thu, 05 Jun 2014 13:35:47 +0000

A lot of popular online discussion platforms (phpbb, vbullitan, invision powerboard, etc.) generate a lot of different kinds of URLs for the same discussion threads and digital assets and do a lot of strange things with links for pagination and such. You can eaisly get stuck in a range of crawler traps. What are some good tactics to use when trying to scope crawling online discussion forms to archve them? So, going into scoping and planning to archive a discussion forum what kinds of ideas and tactics should one be thinking about/considering?

What format questions to ask and considerations to make in acquisition of born digital photography collections

Tue, 22 Apr 2014 13:16:26 +0000

Libraries and Archives that collect and aquire the collections of photographers often collect both sets of negatives, proofs, and prints. As photographers move to incresingly sophisticated workflows for managing, organizing and describing photographs in a range of flavors of RAW and digital negative formats what kinds of questions should curators be working through when making decisions about how to ingest and store the collection.

In particular, I would be interested in what questions and considerations a curator should think through regarding 1) sustainability of formats and 2) authenticity to documentation of the process of a particular photographer.