Gretchen Gueguen
2/25/2011
THE POSSIBILITIES AND CHALLENGES
OF BORN DIGITAL COLLECTIONS

Possibilities.
http://icanhascheezburger.com/2008/02/13/funny-pictures-ceiling-cat-creates-man / http://icanhascheezburger.com/2008/05/20/funny-pictures-arose-basement-cat/
Challenges.

Possibilities & Challenges.

The Possibilities & Challenges of Born Digital Collections
• Definition of Born Digital
• Innate Qualities of Born Digital Materials
– Change
– Scale
– Context
– Evolution
• Practical Management Strategies

“Born digital resources are items created and
Erway, Ricky. 2010. Defining "Born Digital." Report produced by OCLC Research.
Published online at: http://www.oclc.org/research/activities/hiddencollections/borndigital.pdf

Change.

OAIS Model http://public.ccsds.org/publications/archive/650x0b1.pdf

Digital Forensics
“The same forensics software that indexes a criminal suspect’s hard drive allows the archivist to prepare a comprehensive manifest of the electronic files a donor has turned over for accession…ensure the integrity of the digital content…reconstruct a lost or inadvertently deleted version of an electronic manuscript…”
CLIR pub 149: Digital Forensics and Born-Digital Content in Cultural Heritage
Collections. by Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, Richard Ovenden, Gabriela
Redwine with research assistance from Rachel Donahue. December 2010.

Scale.

http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/

Cyberinfrastructure
“Cyberinfrastructure integrates hardware for computing, data and networks, digitally-enabled sensors, observatories and experimental facilities, and an interoperable suite of software and middleware services and tools.”
National Science Foundation. Cyberinfrastructure Vision for 21 st Century Discovery.
March 2007. <http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2007/nsf0728/nsf0728.pdf>

Data
Archive
Data
Archive
Data
Archive
SRB
•Virtualized Environment
•Data Archive 1
•Data Archive 2
•Data Archive 3

Context.

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/03/15/multimedia/1247467357139/the-salman-rushdie-digital-archive.html

Boundaries.
http://pvw.illinois.edu/pvw/

Evolution.

Evolution of
Digital Humanities
“One of his more important observations was that computing in the humanities is not about speeding up conventional scholarship, or making its performance more efficient or accurate, although all those improvements can occur, because what we mean by scholarship itself changes in the process.”
McCarty, Willard. What is Humanities Computing? Toward a Definition of the Field. URL: http://www.cch.kcl.ac.uk/legacy/staff/wlm/essays/what/

http://macgreevy.org

http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/

OAIS

Strategies.

Strategies
1. Donor Education and Involvement.

Strategies
1. Donor Education and Involvement.
2. Preserve What We Can.

Strategies
1. Donor Education and Involvement.
2. Preserve What We Can.
3. Pay Attention.
http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/curation-lifecycle-model

Strategies
1. Donor Education and Involvement.
their weakness too well to assume infallibility; and he knows best how little he knows."

THANKS!
Gretchen Gueguen gretchen_m_k@hotmail.com
http://gretchengueguen.com/UVaPresentation.ppt