[Personal_archives] Literary types and Arrangement

[Susan E Thomas]

Thanks, Michael. That's really interesting. Like you, I've found that
it's often quite difficult to get all the information you need in a
single visit. Where possible, I would definitely recommend at least one
survey visit plus follow-up correspondence before attempting transfer.
The process is very much helped by a patient and/or keen depositor. 

I've discovered that the process is slightly different every time too,
even with the same depositor. Perhaps this is one reason why IT admins
like a standard 'image' to be used across organisational PCs - that way,
at least they know what they're looking at! 

I can reassure you that you're not alone in experiencing difficulty with
the survey. I find it's not alway helpful to give the depositor the
survey document (judgment call); I tend to use it more as a prompt
sheet, to try to make sure I cover everything. The questions often need
to be re-phrased on the fly as you explore the environment and start to
get a grasp of the language the depositor uses when describing their
materials and their digital environment. Not altogether different from
surveying a paper archive in that respect.

Susan

-----Original Message-----
From: Forstrom, Michael [mailto:michael.forstrom at yale.edu]
Sent: Thu 19/11/2009 5:45 PM
To: Susan E Thomas; Personal_archives at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: RE: [Personal_archives] Literary types and Arrangement
 
Thanks, Susan, for pointing to the final report and for enumerating the
benefits to digital forensics techniques. I'll respond to your
questions, Susan, since I'm not sure I'll have another chance this week.
I agree that there is much to be gained from sharing case studies,
though I suspect most of this will be old news to you.

We made minor revisions to the Paradigm records survey (at
http://www.paradigm.ac.uk/workbook/appendices/records-survey.html),
tailoring it more to authors (see the attached draft, though we may have
sent a different version). We emailed the survey to the author, with an
accompanying letter, prior to making a site visit, and then, on the day
of the survey, we worked through the document with him. Some first-time
field observations: it was a challenge to get the author to focus on the
survey (the document and his machines) and to get accurate information
and, upon later review, I felt I didn't get enough detail in my survey
notes. I have found myself going back to the author to fill in gaps
and/or clarify things and, thankfully, he has been very accomodating.

One lesson learned: though we tweaked the survey for authors who are
most likely working independently, outside an institutional/networked
environment, I think we need to go into future surveys prepared to
respond to more complicated environments.

As far as the transfer is concerned, we largely followed Paradigm
protocol for removable media, minus the encryption software/check. We
sought to copy files preserving the directory structure, to run a fixity
check, and to identify a non-invasive method (since we were taking
copies from the author's working machines). We used an external
hard-drive with USB connector, a terminal/command line code for a
recursive md5, and a terminal/command line code for a hash comparison.
Though we haven't sufficiently investigated digital forensics options
yet, we did also try to get a disk image. Interestingly, it didn't work.
One obvious lession here is that the work requires collaboration. In our
case, between curatorial, archival, and IT staff. The work also requires
some technical testing/troubleshooting. I would be remiss if I didn't
acknowledge that a programmer at another institution (Peter Hornsby,
Emory) provided the command line code for the recursive md5.

We also copied the author's Entourage email files (the "Main
Indentity"). We've had only preliminary discussion about how to preserve
it, including an exchange with Riccardo Ferrante of CERP (see
http://siarchives.si.edu/cerp/parserdownload.htm).

Regards,
Michael









From: personal_archives-bounces at mailman.yale.edu
[mailto:personal_archives-bounces at mailman.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Susan E
Thomas
Sent: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 5:51 AM
To: Personal_archives at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: Re: [Personal_archives] Literary types and Arrangement

Hi Michael,

Great to hear some more about the Beinecke's experiences.

In answer to your first question, not all of the Paradigm collections
have been fully processed. Those exemplars acquired from working
politicians were generally quite recent in date and would not be
suitable for full processing because we could not yet provide access to
much of the material. The archive that has been most fully processed is
that of the politician Barbara Castle (those not familiar with Castle
might like to take a look at her obituary in The Guardian at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2002/may/04/guardianobituaries.obituaries
). Castle formed a rather different case study for the project; her
papers were at the Library before the project began, but her computers
and disks were transferred in the first year of the project, once the
Library had already appointed a cataloguer - Matthew Neely - to
catalogue her archive.  The catalogue is complete and our curator of
modern political papers is currently determining what may be released
and when, and 'open' material is gradually being made available to
researchers through this process. One of futureArch's developers - Pete
Cliff - has been working to develop a researcher interface for the
'open' component of Castle's digital items. While we have made some
digital materials accessible to researchers in the past, we have yet to
do this via a proper interface. Once Pete's work goes into reading
rooms, we will have our first real opportunity to see how scholars
interact with this kind of hybrid archive and I hope to feed this
interaction into the development process for refining our researcher
interfaces.

Question number two. Yes, we did make a number of snapshot accessions
during the project and the final report made to our funder (JISC)
provides some information on those case studies (see
http://www.paradigm.ac.uk/projectdocs/jiscreports/ParadigmFinalReportv1.
pdf). For one creator, this amounted to three snapshots in just over a
year. In practice the Library would be unlikely to take snapshots quite
so frequently, but this is what a project timeframe produces. The
Library is now working with the literary press Clutag, from which we
also take snapshot hybrid accessions - these come in roughly annually
and the timing tends to be tied to the publication of the Press'
Archipelago magazine. Under our current futureArch project, we are
processing many of our legacy hybrid archives for access and Clutag is
one of those we're working on. As part of that process, we have recently
captured* all the Clutag digital material received in the past three
years and will be surveying and cataloguing this alongside the papers
received with it.

For surveying born-digital material, we are making more and more use of
'digital forensic'  techniques, more typically associated with the
police, FBI, fraud office, etc., rather than archives and libraries. The
individual who has pioneered their use in the context of personal
archives is Jeremy John, of the British Library, who has been a terrific
collaborator (see his 2008 iPRES paper at
http://www.bl.uk/ipres2008/presentations_day1/09_John.pdf). Forensic
analysis software is designed to discover relevant evidence among vast
quantities of data and supports a number of techniques useful to
archivists and curators. So, how is it useful? Well, it helps with a
number of things:

1. Provides an infrastructure within which to explore materials while
maintaining authenticity - these environments have to produce evidence
that can stand up in court
2. Identifying duplicates across different media or snapshot accessions
3. Identifying similar files (not something we've tested much yet, but
could have huge potential for literary drafts)
4. Availability of bookmarking and annotation tools to support
arrangement
5. Ability to preview a wide range of file formats
6. Ability to filter data, including the option to ignore non-archival
data (such as clipart or application software)
7. Ability to recover 'deleted' data (yes, there are ethical issues here
that need to be addressed)
8. Ability to export files and metadata in CSV format
9. Pre-configured data filters that allow discovery of certain file
types that might be in unexpected locations on a hard disk drive

Moving away from the issue of appraisal and analysis for a moment and
returning to the issue of transfer. I'm pleased to hear that the
Beinecke has been able to adapt the Paradigm survey and transfer
protocols; are you able to say some more about what changes you made,
what the experience was like, and perhaps tell us something about the
email system you encountered, and how you acquired the email from it? If
others have experiences of 'digital transfer' that they are willing to
share, I'm sure many of us would find that useful.

Best,

Susan

* By 'captured' I mean we have created 'disk images' of the material
given to us on CD and floppy disk. These disk images can be used by
forensic tools and can be mounted on computers as if they were the disk
in question.


Susan Thomas
Digital Archivist/Project Manager
Bodleian Library

Web:
http://futurearchives.blogspot.com<http://futurearchives.blogspot.com/>
Tel:    +44 (0) 1865 283821
Post: Oxford University Library Services
         Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES


________________________________
From: personal_archives-bounces at mailman.yale.edu
[mailto:personal_archives-bounces at mailman.yale.edu] On Behalf Of
Forstrom, Michael
Sent: 17 November 2009 20:37
To: Personal_archives at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: [Personal_archives] Literary types and Arrangement
For starters, I'd also like to publicly congratulate Susan and her
colleagues on the Workbook.

I'll respond to Susan's call for "other experiences" with personal
archives containing digital materials and move on to discussion relating
to arrangement. At the Beinecke Library we've been acquiring manuscript
collections with what I've indentified as fugitive digital content
(small numbers of disks) for roughly a decade. At Beinecke these disks
tend to reside in the papers of writers and in the records of small
presses and literary journals and they tend to contain word processing
files, such as drafts of writings or letters.

We've processed several personal archives containing disks and
discovered that, in general, small numbers of disks and files lend
themselves to item-level analysis and arrangement by content and larger
numbers of disks and files lend themselves to arrangement by format.
There are of course other considerations, but these are the two models
we've pursued to date.

We recently acquired our first real hybrid archive--a writer in
mid-career. We made a macro/functional appraisal and a snapshot
accession, copying files, incuding email, directly off two working
machines in the writer's home. In doing so, I should add, we tested a
revised Paradigm records survey and transfer protocol. We may be able to
respect the original order in arrangement, though processing will be
complicated by the fact that there is duplication between the machines
and variations in the directories. Assuming additions to this
collection, a preliminary proposal is to leave well enough alone and not
integrate the digital and paper components at this time. We need to
revisit this, but there is an argument for tackling this now, doing some
additional appraisal, testing appraisal tools, in general, doing more so
that some of the complexities of the accession, say, context provided
through dialogue with the author, isn't lost or difficult to interpret
at the point of future processing.

So, a couple questions for Susan. First, whether any Paradigm project
collections have been fully processed? And second, if you conducted any
snapshot accessions as part of the project, what if any additional work
was  done on them in house. Other comments welcome of course.

Best,
Michael Forstrom
Manuscript Unit
Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library
New Haven, CT   06520
203.432.7215