Chris & Dave etal One message to save time and because there seems to be an interest in this topic Chris The instructions that I loosely mentioned would be to guide a depositor to copy the files across without changing date created and other underlying metadata, though I note from Dave Thompson's very comprehensive response that this isn't necessary. I am not sure that the format of the archives makes a huge difference, as with paper material we would want to take the material that was offered to us - there are a host of moral and ethical issues if we seek to recover deleted files - there is also a (unacceptable) high risk that trust in the archives will be lost In terms of censoring the content offered/transferred we know this happens with paper material and I have no reason to expect it to stop for born-digital archives. In some cases I would expect an archive to return/destroy material that was accidentally transferred to the archives but beyond the scope of the agreement - eg personal material amongst organisational records etc etc Dave Thanks for the pointer to the Peli cases hadn't heard of this before! I accept what you say about CD but the idea stemmed from a possible deposit of large media files amounting to some 700GB which is why I started to think of hard drives for integrity and ease from the depositors perspective rather than copying across to multiple CD/DVDs etc I do also support everything Dave mentioned about care and forensics - we support this and have over the last year built-up two digital forensic workstations for processing material Best wishes Simon -----Original Message----- From: Digital-Preservation Announcement and Information List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Chris Rusbridge Sent: 25 January 2012 10:48 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Collecting born-digital archives Wouldn't the answer be strongly affected by your aims? I remember Jeremy Leighton John talking about their almost forensic setup, where there were specific changes to avoid the copy process changing the original. Are you interested in the content only as it exists on the surface, or as interested in previously deleted versions, for instance? Is it likely your candidates might feel tempted to censor the process, or change things before starting it? -- Chris Rusbridge Mobile: +44 791 7423828 Email: [log in to unmask] Adopt the email charter! http://emailcharter.org/ On 25 Jan 2012, at 10:36, Simon P Wilson wrote: > We are reviewing our approaches to the collection of born-digital archives and wondered if anybody had successfully used external hard drives (with instructions etc) to allow an individual to copy files across without actually being present? > - In much the same way that a paper archive may be transferred without a member of archives staff necessarily being present > > Obviously there are some collections where you would want to be there but as the university collections material from across the UK the time/cost of a visit is hard to justify in all cases > - Or where a system/process has been set-up on a first visit and pen/external drive used for subsequent accruals > - I appreciate we would still need to discuss possible content / format issues etc etc > > We are thinking of using a courier service to ship the drive to/from the archives and to use drives that require a password to use > - For example the LaCie Rugged Mini 1TB drive or a encrypted pen drive for smaller collections (eg upto 30GB) > > Comments, thoughts and shared experiences etc are welcomed > > best wishes > Simon > > Simon Wilson > Senior Archivist > Hull History Centre > Worship Street > Hull > HU2 8BG > > Tel: 01482 317506 > Web: http://www.hullhistorycentre.org.uk > > ************************************************************** > To view the terms under which this email is distributed please go to > http://www2.hull.ac.uk/legal/disclaimer.aspx > > ************************************************************** > ************************************************************** To view the terms under which this email is distributed please go to http://www2.hull.ac.uk/legal/disclaimer.aspx **************************************************************