Search results

This paper aims to assess how prepared public bodies are for the transfer of born-digital records to the National Archives (TNA) of the UK in line with the reduction in the transfer rule from 30 to 20 years.

The change in the transfer rule means that records of UK public bodies will be transferred to TNA for permanent preservation at 20 years as opposed to 30 years old. This move, which has been described as a major change that is going to be introduced in a manageable and affordable way (20-year rule, The National Archives), will inevitably witness the transfer of born-digital records to the archives much earlier than would have been the case if the change in the transfer rule had not been made. This paper reports on research carried out in the winter of 2017 on the extent to which UK public bodies are prepared for the transfer of born-digital records to TNA. Research was based on a survey of 23 public bodies which included ministries, charities and non-departmental public bodies. The target population was predominantly public bodies that had the highest level of transfer of records to TNA. The justification for this lies in the fact that these bodies, amongst others, transfer the most records to TNA, thus it would be interesting to gain an insight into how prepared these relatively larger public bodies are with regard to born-digital transfer. The remaining public bodies were chosen randomly amongst non-ministerial departments. The primary areas under analysis are plans of public bodies for the transfer of born-digital records, processes for transfer to be undertaken such as selection, appraisal etc., the use of technology in sensitivity review and the trigger date for the transfer of records.

An analysis of the research findings found that while a few UK public bodies surveyed had transferred datasets within the framework of the TNA Government Datasets (NDAD) initiative or as part of an inquiry, only one public body had transferred other born-digital records to TNA. The findings also reveal that most public bodies are yet to plan for, or to adjust, their current archival processes to take into account the different mind-set and skills required for the transfer of born-digital records. The level of preparedness is therefore limited primarily because public bodies have yet to undertake a transfer of born-digital records to the archives. The research findings also revealed that public bodies had not as yet made adjustments or changes to current practice to take into account the issues relating to the processing of born-digital records prior to transfer.

The findings of the research at hand are based on a survey submitted electronically to twenty-three public bodies with the aim of assessing how prepared they are for the transfer of born-digital records to the National Archives (TNA). The survey was sent to 27 public bodies with responses received by 23 public bodies. The survey sent to these bodies comprises eight questions that were deemed to be important in the current digital landscape with regard to the processes involved in the transfer of records, beginning from their creation. Thus, an element of subjectivity exists with regard to the outcome of the research, as the public bodies chosen were guided in prioritising any issues about digital transfer through the questions posed. The research carried out is also limited in that it focuses primarily on ministerial departments (14 of the 23 surveyed) and also constitutes a very small sample of UK public bodies overall. However, the originality of the data obtained through the study carried out by far outweighs the limitations of the research methodology.

This paper highlights that the transfer of born-digital records through original research amongst the 23 public bodies surveyed is not widespread, and that processes and procedures specifically for the management of processes for born-digital records are yet to be implemented. The study concludes that long-term planning for the transfer of born-digital records is yet to be undertaken and that public bodies are more likely to deal with the issue when their digital records are closer to reaching the point of transfer.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the challenges to born-digital institutional archiving using a New York Archive Museum (NYAM) as a case.

The digital record-keeping practices at NYAM were studied using three data sources: focus groups with staff, totaling 81 individuals, or approximately one-third of all staff; analysis of network file storage; and analysis of digital records in archival storage, or specifically removable media in acid-free archive boxes.

This case study indicates that the greatest challenges to born-digital institutional archiving are not necessarily technological but social and cultural. Or rather, the challenge is getting individuals to transfer material to a digital archive so that it can undergo the technological transformations needed to ensure its long-term availability. However, transfer is impeded by a variety of factors which can be addressed through education, infrastructure development and proactive appraisal for permanent retention.

This paper highlights the challenges to born-digital institutional archiving, yet notes that these challenges can be overcome by following a multi-pronged approach.

This paper outlines the challenges to born-digital institutional archiving, which is not often discussed in the literature outside of the context of higher education.

It is commonly acknowledged that history matters in strategy. However, the strategy literature mainly discusses history in terms of path dependency, leaving little room for managerial agency, despite growing anecdotal evidence that managers can actively draw on corporate history to improve decision-making. An emerging literature on how managers use the past to give sense to internal and external stakeholders has given rise to a more agent-based approach to history, but while sense-giving is commonly connected to sense-making as a driver of strategic change, the role of history in sense-making remains unexplored. Drawing on the concept of analogical reasoning, this chapter theorizes the connection between corporate archives and managerial sense-making, arguing that analogies drawn from past experience can reduce uncertainty and foster learning. This theory leads to the suggestion that consulting the corporate archive can promote strategic renewal and thus boost performance.

The Texas Digital Newspaper Program (TDNP) supports newspaper preservation and access for any title in Texas, from any date, any location and representing any community. As an active member of the Texas Press Association, TDNP also supports large-scale preservation of born-digital newspaper PDF issues for member publishers. This paper aims to explore how the early days of TDNP built a strong foundation of collaboration and support for large-scale preservation projects, including support for preserving a state press association PDF newspaper collection.

This paper is a case study of a collaborative endeavor to create a large-scale, statewide digital newspaper preservation hub in Texas. This paper details how individual partnerships led to new and larger partnerships. Figures and tables represent numbers of partner institutions served, numbers of newspapers preserved and screenshots of how these items appear within collections on the digital repository environment of The Portal to Texas History. This paper concludes with recommendations for groups interested in developing their own collaborative projects.

As a case study, the data explored include numbers of partnering institutions, materials contributed by partnering institutions and how these numbers help to forward the TDNP agenda.

The final recommendations are lessons learned through collaboration, and the implications are real-world advice from the partners developed through the TDNP.

Hosting over 3.25 million pages of newspapers, the TDNP has become an enormous hub of newspaper preservation in Texas, and it is unique in the numbers of partners it supports and the numbers of pages it is able to host for free access via The Portal to Texas History. This paper is intended to help other groups across the world build their own collaborative preservation efforts, and it offers pragmatic advice derived from hands-on experience.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the modes of digital content creation for digital libraries and discuss the associated copyright issues with the types of digital content.

Prevalent copyright laws in India in the context of digital content have been studied and issues related to specific types of digital content have been discussed.

In addition to two known types of digital content, namely born digital and turned digital, a third type, gained digital has been delineated. It is found that extant copyright laws, particularly in India, allow scope for forming opinions with regard to digital content thereby giving room for insecurity for digital content creators.

Copyright laws in the context of World Intellectual Property Organization and India only have been discussed.

The paper will be useful to digital content creators and digital library managers/administrators to understand copyright issues relevant to the digital library.

The classification of digital libraries based on content as has been delineated in this paper is an original work and has reported for the first time. The linking of digital content with the copyright issues makes it useful.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate strategies to appraise email correspondence to select significant email for permanent preservation without capturing trivial or personal emails. The strategies were tested on the actual email accounts of selected individuals occupying important roles within an important cultural institution in the Northeastern USA.

Treating this art museum as a case study site, email messages are manually appraised for retention using a rubric. Following the appraisal, strategies for expediting this appraisal process, using what is learned from the manual appraisal process, are explored.

A major finding of this study is that sent mail is almost always significant, although preserving only sent mail, or preserving sent mail in combination with inbox items that have been acted upon (replied to or forwarded), are not sufficient to capture significant correspondence. Rather, a social network approach holds the most promise to accelerate the process of email appraisal.

This study provides empirically grounded strategies for appraising email for permanent retention.

The purpose of this paper is to show how the British Library (BL) is responding to the changing world of publishing through the Digital Library Programme.

The paper is a descriptive review of the factors that led to the BL establishing the Digital Library Programme. The paper describes the goals of the programme, the priorities for the programme, the mechanisms for providing access to digital material acquired by the Library and gives an overview of the approach to ensuring that material stored in the Digital Library System remains permanently accessible. It also gives a brief overview of some of the main challenges that the Programme faces.

The unique position of the BL within the research environment means that there is great benefit to be had in building a digital library to store significant amounts of material even where it is already available elsewhere. The reason for this is the ability of the Library to sustain storage and access over a much longer period than can be achieved by commercial companies. The Library has also built up significant expertise and a world leadership in the field of digital preservation. The use of a programme and project structure to manage the development of the infrastructure, processes and procedures has already shown that it can deliver significant benefit in the changing landscape of digital dissemination of information. The use of an iterative and incremental approach both for the programme as a whole and for projects within the programme has shown significant benefits in allowing the BL to make progress where the end goal is very ambitious and there is no obvious off‐the‐shelf solution.

This may have broad applications for similar complex projects.

The BL Digital Library Programme is providing a solution to the acquisition and dissemination of digital material on a larger scale than is common within the library and archiving community.