Session 2
The personal computer plays an ever increasing role in the creation of written documents and personal archives, especially since its integration within the internet (and other networks) and its growing ability to store and transfer large files. This means that the archives of writers, scientists and other persons of cultural and historical interest that are now entering our libraries sometimes contain not only texts and images on paper (either written, printed or photocopied). They might include electronic texts (either drafts for a printed publication or publications in their own right: webtexts, blogs, emails), digital images, even sounds and moving images — stored on floppy disks, hard disks, even the computers that were used while creating the files. The contributions in this session will outline and discuss the problems (and beginnings of solutions) pertaining to the acquisition, selection, preservation, cataloguing and consultation of these ‘born digital’ materials, such as:
- the importance of communication between creators, curators and future researchers of born-digital materials
- views on the proper object of preservation (files with or without software and even hardware, migration to other formats)
- views on document status (‘original’ versus ‘copy’) and on the ‘materiality’ of digital documents (‘form’ versus ‘content’)
- how to catalogue the wide variety of digital documents and make them available to users in relation with paper materials of the same collection?
- copyright issues, not only with regard to the creators of the materials but also to the software vendors and internet providers (ownership of digital content)
- cooperation between institutions: sharing of expertise, standards, best practices
- roles and responsibilities of manuscript librarians, digital curators and IT-experts
- the importance of communication between creators, curators and future researchers of born-digital materials
- views on the proper object of preservation (files with or without software and even hardware, migration to other formats)
- views on document status (‘original’ versus ‘copy’) and on the ‘materiality’ of digital documents (‘form’ versus ‘content’)
- how to catalogue the wide variety of digital documents and make them available to users in relation with paper materials of the same collection?
- copyright issues, not only with regard to the creators of the materials but also to the software vendors and internet providers (ownership of digital content)
- cooperation between institutions: sharing of expertise, standards, best practices
- roles and responsibilities of manuscript librarians, digital curators and IT-experts
