The No-nonsense Guide to Born-digital Content

by Heather Bowden, Walker Sampson

Overview

This book offers a comprehensive, entry-level guide for librarians and archivists who have found themselves managing or are planning to manage born-digital content. Libraries and archives of all sizes are collecting and managing an increasing proportion of digital content. Within this body of digital content is a growing pool of ‘born-digital’ content: content that has been created and has often existed solely in digital form. The No-nonsense Guide to Born-digital Content explains step by step processes for developing and implementing born-digital content workflows in library and archive settings of all sizes and includes a range of case studies collected from small, medium and large institutions internationally. Coverage includes:

• the wide range of digital storage media and the various sources of born-digital content
• a guide to digital information basics
• selection, acquisition, accessioning and ingest
• description, preservation and access
• methods for designing & implementing workflows for born-digital collection processing
• a comprehensive glossary of common technical terms
• strategies and philosophies to move forward as technologies change.

This book will be useful reading for LIS and archival students and professionals who are working with, or plan to work with, born digital content. It will also be of interest to museum professionals, data managers, data scientists, and records managers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781783302567
Publisher:	Facet Publishing
Publication date:	04/15/2018
Series:	Facet No-nonsense Guides
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Heather Ryan is the Director of Special Collections, Archives & Preservation and Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder Libraries. She earned her PhD in Information and Library Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Walker Sampson is the Digital Archivist at the University of Colorado Boulder Libraries. He earned his MS in Information Science at the University of Texas at Austin before beginning work at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in 2011.

Table of Contents

Foreword - Trevor Owens

Introduction

What is born-digital content?
Why is this important?
About the book
Additional resources
Representing the world of libraries and archives

1. Digital information basics

What is digital information?
Hexadecimal
Digital file types
Storage media
Command line basics
Code repositories
Conclusion
Further reading

2. Selection

Types of born-digital content
Format- versus content-driven collecting decisions
Mission statements, collecting policies and donor agreements
Gift agreements
Stanford University’s approach to selection in web archiving
Conclusion
Further reading

3.Acquisition, accessioning and ingest

Principles in acquisition
Acquisition of born-digital material on a physical carrier
Checksums and checksum algorithms
Acquisition of network-born materials
Accession
Ingest
Conclusion
Further reading

4.Description

General fields and types of information
Descriptive standards and element sets
General element sets
Descriptive systems
Use cases
Conclusion
Further reading

5. Digital preservation storage and strategies

A note on acquisition
A note on file formats
Thinking about storage
Certification
Digital preservation policy
Conclusion
Further reading

6. Access

Deciding on your access strategy
Methods of access
Use case
Conclusion
Further reading

7. Designing and implementing workflows

A note on tools
Design principles
Workflow and policy
Examples
Case study
Conclusion
Further reading

8. New and emerging areas in born-digital materials

Technology in general
Storage
Software and apps
Cloud technologies
Smartphones
Digital art and new media
Emerging descriptive and access methods
Growing your skills
Conclusion
Further reading

Conclusion