Minutes of the CJH/METRO born-digital legacy media transfer working group, 11/12/14
Present: Ginger Barna (Leo Baeck Institute Library); Chris Bentley (Leo Baeck Institute Archives); Sarah Haug (Guggenheim Museum Archives); Christine McEvilly (American Jewish Historical Society); Natalie Milbrodt (Queens Library); Margo Padilla (METRO); Henry Raine (New-York Historical Society); Kevin Schlottmann (Center for Jewish History).
Transfer Station
Margo provided a quick overview of the digital forensics workstation that she has built for METRO. The system can handle 5.25" and 3.5" discs, optical discs, and USB devices. If there is demand for other formats, such as a Zip or Jaz drives, are needed, the system can be expanded. METRO has spent about $3500 for the computer, drives, and write blockers. This includes multiples of certain items, and such a system could be easily assembled for less. BitCurator is the primary software tool.
Transferred Materials
Margo transferred the test materials provided by the group in July. Transferred files were provided via USB drive to AJHS, LBI Library, and LBI Archives.
Creating each disk image took between 5-30 minutes of active attention to transfer. Much of this was due to tweaking the equipment and software. This will likely happen less with additional experience, but some amount of tweaking is probably always going to be needed. As Margo said, "Imaging is easy, troubleshooting is hard."
To test the ultimate deliverables, Margo tried to obtain disk images in the .e01, .aff, and .dd formats. She then ran basic BC reports on disk contents, and normalized some known file types (e.g. WordPerfect to PDF).
Everything done so far has been on an item-level basis, but in theory some actions like file normalization could be done in bulk at the command line.
Sustainability
METRO's goal is to provide Tier I service to all members for free, or very cheaply. This will include a cap on the number of free items, which should still allow METRO to transfer test batches for institutions, so they can analyze what they have. Additional Tier II service (extensive troubleshooting, deeper reporting, normalization, research) would be billed at an hourly rate, as would expenses for new technology such as additional types of drives. Ideally, METRO would add staff or train existing staff.
Service Agreement
The draft service agreement that Margo and Jefferson created was based on the recently published OCLC report [1].
Metro Conference
The group's application to present at the METRO conference on January 15 was accepted. A few different ideas were proposed; Kevin suggested a presentation that follows one item from creation, to archive, to selection for this group, to imaging, and finally to accessibility. He will examine the AJHS and LBI objects and send a draft presentation to the group for comment. Tentative punny title: "A Floppy Tale."
Tasks for Next Meeting
Transferred materials
AJHS, LBI Library, and LBI Archives: Carefully analyze delivered materials and share results by email
All: Based on this analysis, for the next meeting we should draft definitions of Tier I and Tier II service. Example questions to address: How many attempts would be included in a Tier 1? Would Tier 2 (billed hourly) include additional attempts? Should any file normalization be included in Tier 1?
Sustainability
This group can help Metro refine its workflows by defining deliverables, re-examining the agreement in this light, and providing content for use by Metro partners who use this service.
All: Create basic reference documents for smaller institutions, from the accession and survey stage to how to talk to Metro about the stuff, and what to do with a disk image and extracted files, including simple directions for accessing common older file formats. Look to existing content at MITH and Stanford– no need to re-invent the wheel.
Other
Kevin: Follow up with BHS and Met to see if they are still interested in coming to a meeting
Kevin: Draft Metro presentation
All: Continue to think about a controlled vocabulary for legacy media. We are not a position to create or maintain such a vocabulary, but maybe we can figure out who is and encourage them. For example, the Getty might be a logical home, either as an extension of AAT or as a separate vocabulary.
Links
[1] http://oclc.org/content/dam/research/publications/library/2014/oclcresearch-born-digital-content-transfer-2014.pdf
2