Appraisal

In the current digital age, data are everywhere and are continually being created, collected and otherwise captured by a range of users for a variety of applications. Curating digital content is a growing concern both for business users and academic researchers. Selecting, collecting, preserving and archiving digital assets, especially research data sets, are important steps in the research life cycle and can help expand the boundaries of research by allowing data to be reused.

The privacy and access challenges of archives containing electronic communications of enduring historical value are addressed in the Libraries’ latest release of ePADD.

Despite rapid growth of email use since its inception 40 years ago, and the increasing presence of email within research collections, the vast majority of email archives of modern historical figures remain inaccessible to researchers. Repositories that seek to make email content available for research face significant copyright and privacy issues and can be daunted by the sheer volume of email transferred.

This essay argues for involving archivists in the management of born-digital library materials (i.e., created and managed in digital form).
Key highlights include:

With apologies to Walter Benjamin, I would like to reflect on some of the challenges and strategies associated with the appraisal of digital archives that we've faced here at the Bentley Historical Library. The following discussion will highlight current digital archives appraisal techniques employed by the Bentley, many of which we are hoping to integrate into the forthcoming Archivematica Appraisal and Arrangement tab.
Foundations and Principles

Based on existing appraisal/selection policies in libraries, archives, museum, social science and science data centers, this paper presents a generic appraisal/selection framework for digital curation. In presenting this framework, the author discusses how archival appraisal theories, methods, and criteria adapt to the general digital curation context.
http://www.ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/9.2.65/370

During the digitisation of legacy archive material at ORF, the Austrian public-service broadcaster, hundreds of thousands of video cassettes will need to be converted to digital file formats over the next decade. To guarantee the sustainable usability of this file-based material, thoroughly-planned guidelines for Quality Control (QC) have to be worked out. Although some QC tools already exist, their detailed parameter settings as well as the exact requirements to test against, have not yet been determined and will be the main focus of the EBU QC group.

CALIPR is a powerful instrument for compiling and manipulating data to determine the preservation needs of collections. This website leads the user through the design and implementation of a preservation needs assessment survey using the CALIPR program.

Understanding collection needs is the starting place for development of a comprehensive preservation program. CALIPR has been designed to enable institutions without preservation expertise on their staffs to assess the preservation needs of paper-based and audio/visual collections.

This Digital Preservation Toolkit provides accessible template, frameworks, decision trees and documents that are designed to help museums assess their digital preservation needs, to produce policy and procedures around digital preservation, and to develop, select and implement an action plan. Resources are presented in chronological order of need for the development of a digital preservation strategy.

DPOE Curriculum
The DPOE Baseline Digital Preservation Curriculum consists of 6 easily understandable topics.

* Identify . . . the types of digital content you have.
* Select . . . what portion of your digital content will be preserved.
* Store . . . your selected content for the long term.
* Protect . . . your content from everyday threats and emergency contingencies.
* Manage . . . and implement requirements for long term management.
* Provide . . . access to digital content over time.

Welcome to Resources Anonymous, the support group for librarians addicted to information overload and teachers trying to stay up to speed on the Common Core Curriculum. One dirty secret of librarianship is that some of us still measure our worth by the quantity of resources we amass and disburse. But in this age of information abundance, our real value is being able to discern quality over quantity.