Engineering the Future of the Past » Events

Personal Digital Archiving

Kari R. Smith — Thu, 09 May 2013 17:36:29 +0000

The past couple of weeks I’ve been thinking about personal digital archiving and how to talk about it to non-archivists. For Preservation Week, the MIT Libraries hosted the ALCTS webinar by Mike Ashenfelder. I provided a Question and Answer session for local attendees.

While Mike’s presentation focused on digital images and digitizing to digital image files, I took a broader tack and talked about records management in context of personal files and as the lead into personal archiving. Presenting at MIT Libraries is interesting because we get a variety of attendees – Librarians, Institute staff, faculty, graduate students, and general public. There are many good resources if you are interested in knowing more about personal digital archiving to include information about digitization, description, deciding what to keep, and how to best store and protect your digital content for the long-term.

Some Resources for Managing Digital Material and Personal Digital Archiving

Personal Digital Archiving, Library of Congress website
“Perspectives on Personal Digital Archiving” a compilation of posts related to personal digital archiving from The Signal.
Born digital: Guidance for Donors and Dealers and Archival Repositories
Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines
Personal Digital Estate Planning blog post from Library of Congress, The Signal

Tagging and Finding Your Digital Files, an MIT Libraries Resource Guide
Store and Protect Your Digital Files, an MIT Libraries Resource Guide
MIT IS&T website, especially the Secure Computing resources

Defining the Role of Digital Archivist

Kari R. Smith — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 18:22:10 +0000

Recently, I was asked to present at the MIT Libraries all-staff meeting on the topic, “Defining the Role of Digital Archivist.” It was a great opportunity to share with colleagues examples of what we have accomplished during the past year and also to speak to the point of defining the role of digital archivist at MIT Libraries. During the 30 minute presentation I talked about what archivists do on a day-to-day basis and how the role of the digital archivist supports and innovates on that work as we deal with digital collections.

Presentation Talking Points:

The Roles and Responsibilities of all archivists also hold true for digital archivists
Prerequisite knowledge and experience for a digital archivist may include additional technology and technical skills
Digital Preservation is likely to be included in the responsibilities of a digital archivist
Defining the role of digital archivist across our profession can differ widely
At MIT the digital archivist’s role includes: increasing the Institute Archives capacity to ingest, appraise, organize, store, protect, and provide access to digital material (digitized and born-digital)
The role is dedicated to implementation, strategic planning, and building a knowledge and skill base for managing digital material specifically within the Institute Archive and Special Collections and for the MIT Libraries generally.
Roles and Responsibilities of the digital archivist include those in the following areas:

Donor Relations
Preparing for Ingest
Manage and Protect
Integrate Digital into Practice
Access and Use

My presentation slides are attached to this posting. Please take a look — I’m glad to hear your comments.

January IAP Sessions at MIT Libraries

Kari R. Smith — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 15:37:20 +0000

During the month of January at MIT there are several IAP (Independent Activities Period) sessions that Institute Archives staff are presenting, which are related to digital archives. We list them here for any MIT affiliate who may be interested in attending and for the general audience to have an idea of some of the outreach and education we are doing here at MIT Libraries. If you are not an MIT affiliate and are interested in the presentations feel free to contact me for further information about them.

Digital Forensics for Archives 101, presented by Kari Smith

Personal Records Management 101, presented by Kari Smith and Krista Ferrante

Tagging and Finding your Files, presented by Kari Smith and Mikki Macdonald
Associated Resource Guide and presentation slides:
http://libguides.mit.edu/metadatatools

Storing and Protecting your Digital Documents, presented by Kari Smith and Helen Bailey. Associated Resource Guide: http://libguides.mit.edu/lifecycle/personal/storing-protecting