Claus Jensen
Claus Jensen
A pragmatic solution to the acquisition and archiving of born-digital material: letting scholars auto-archive
Manuscript departments in research libraries collect "papers" and other unique written material of scholars, artists, politicians, etc. Traditionally, such archival material - on paper - is acquired long time after it has been created. Sifting and filing of "papers" is time-consuming and costly for libraries. The same applies to born-digital material, when acquired post-mortem, or for some other reason without competent involvement of the creator. Moreover, today, much of the born-digital material which should have been preserved is lost, because it was not archived digitally and securely in time.
Can a substantial part of such material be archived closer to its time of creation, in ways that are easy to cope with for the creator of the archive, cheaper for the library, and basically offer the same possibilities of monitoring access as the archiving library's rules and practices regarding traditional archival material?
This paper describes an ongoing project at The Royal Library, Copenhagen, developed within the framework of the international PLANETS project regarding long-term digital preservation. In the current experimental phase, selected scholars are offered the possibility of ingesting copies of e-mails, or digital documents attached to emails (manuscripts, reports, etc.), onto a server by using the "forward" function in their own mailbox, targeting a personal archive-mailbox, from where the material is automatically and securely stored for long-time digital preservation. The project explores the technical and human aspects, as well as the advantages and disadvantages, for the archive creators and for the library personnel, of such, yet not implemented, systems of auto-archiving.
Can a substantial part of such material be archived closer to its time of creation, in ways that are easy to cope with for the creator of the archive, cheaper for the library, and basically offer the same possibilities of monitoring access as the archiving library's rules and practices regarding traditional archival material?
This paper describes an ongoing project at The Royal Library, Copenhagen, developed within the framework of the international PLANETS project regarding long-term digital preservation. In the current experimental phase, selected scholars are offered the possibility of ingesting copies of e-mails, or digital documents attached to emails (manuscripts, reports, etc.), onto a server by using the "forward" function in their own mailbox, targeting a personal archive-mailbox, from where the material is automatically and securely stored for long-time digital preservation. The project explores the technical and human aspects, as well as the advantages and disadvantages, for the archive creators and for the library personnel, of such, yet not implemented, systems of auto-archiving.
