Analyzing a Collaborative Project

Born Digital: Guidance for Donors, Dealers, and Archival Repositories

Project Overview

The report Born Digital: Guidance for Donors, Dealers, and Archival Repositories was published in 2013 and represents a long collaboration among rare book and manuscript libraries in the United States and the United Kingdom to develop recommendations for acquiring and transitioning born digital materials into an archival repository.  The collaboration brought together ten archivists and curators from six institutions: the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas Austin, the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory University, the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University, the British Library, and the Bodleian Library at Oxford University.  All of these professionals had experience working with digital materials and were frustrated with the lack of training and preparation they received in regards to born digital material.  They had concluded that archival repositories often collect born digital material as an after thought, and that this can lead to inappropriate ingestion and management of these materials.

The guide offers recommendations in four areas: the initial collection overview, privacy and intellectual property, acquisition of born digital material, and post-acquisition review.  Each section includes a list of recommendations for both donors and dealers and for the repository staff.  The report is meant to be meaningful to both those that wish to give (or sell) born digital materials and to those that are responsible for ingesting them.  In addition, several appendices in the report offer suggestions for tasks for staff, checklists for donors and staff, and suggested contingency plans for the unexpected.  The recommendations largely focused on open communication between donors, dealers, and repository staff to ensure there are limited surprises in acquiring born digital material.

A digital archivist and an acquisitions specialist represented each US institution, and one individual who was responsible for both of these duties represented each of the two UK institutions.  The project had no funding, and relied predominantly on free software so that the participants could stay in contact, including video conferencing and file-sharing software.  The participants also met in person during separately funded conferences.

The first draft of the report was completed in 2012, and was reviewed by LIS professionals at MIT Libraries and the Gates Archive before being published in 2013.  The first draft was published with MediaCommons Press, an online publisher that specializes in open public review.  The report was posted and was open for readers to comment; this enabled the participants to engage the public in the born digital conversation, and also allowed the report to remain independent of any one institution.  After publishing with MediaCommons, the writers of the report also sought a more traditional publishing solution and published with the Council on Library Information Resources, a non-profit, independent organization that is dedicated to fostering collaboration in the library profession.  This outlet also allowed the report to be seen by a wider audience, including publishers, scholars, students, and other types of library professionals.

Success of the Project

 I think this project was successful.  Considering that the participants in this collaborative effort took it upon themselves to complete this report with absolutely no funding, the final result is a very informative and helpful report.  The recommendations are appropriate and beneficial to each target audience, and I think both groups of people could use this report to understand the process of acquiring born digital materials.  Users could also use the appendices as checklists each time they come into contact with born digital material.

In considering the success of this project, I researched another similar collaborative effort: the AIMS (An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship) project, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and published in 2012.  The Born Digital report references the AIMS Project as a related report in one of its appendices.  This project had participants from The University of Virginia, Stanford University, University of Hull, and Yale University.  The final product of this collaboration is a 181-page document with 9 appendices.  It is geared more towards the LIS field and offers very technical recommendations as well as specific workflows for each task in the life cycle of born digital material.  I think that the Born Digital report is much more straightforward and accessible, most likely because it is meant to be read by a wider population.

Both of these projects deal with born digital material, and both cite the wide variety of digital collections and procedures as challenges to developing standard recommendations.  The Born Digital project was an attempt to create an even playing field among donors, dealers, and managers of born digital material, so that the material can be acquired and managed safely for many years to come.  The main challenge to this is how many variables exist among born digital materials – from file size, to format, to access restrictions that can alter data.  I think that this report succeeds in creating simple recommendations for both sides of the transaction that could actually be helpful in practice.  The recommendations are broad enough that they account for almost any variation, but can also be tailored to a specific situation.  The appendices are also extremely helpful in offering more specific advice.

A sign of success for this project would be its wide acceptance in the library and archives community.  I think that the choice of publisher for the report, while admirable and wonderfully publicly accessible, could have been detrimental this widespread acceptance.  I couldn’t find any mention of the report on the American Library Association’s website or blog, and likewise for the Society of American Archivists.  While the participating institutions publicized it, and many independent bloggers seem to have posted about the report, nothing has come from the big names in the library and archives world.  On the University of North Texas Library website, usage statistics state that the report was only accessed from their website 78 times since its publication.  While this is only a hint of the larger usage of the report, that number is not very inspiring.  So, exposure to the report is fairly limited.  Even though the report is well written and extremely helpful, not many people seem to know it exists.

Lessons Learned

This collaborative effort among archives in the US and the UK underlines how important born-digital materials are to the future of archival and manuscript collections.  Professionals working with these materials on a daily basis realized that there was limited information on how best to manage these items.  Archival and manuscript collections are sometimes seen as the last to get on the digital bandwagon, so I think that it is important for these professionals to prepare for all kinds of situations.

In addition, this investigation into a collaborative project has shown me how funding is not necessarily required for the success of a project, but that it definitely helps in getting the word out.  No matter how wonderful the project is, if no one knows about it, it’s difficult to see any positive results.

Even without funding, however, a great resource can still be produced.  The Born Digital report proves that the collaborative spirit is alive and well.  In addition, this project depicts how important networking can be in this field.  The participants of this report may have met at a conference, discussed born digital material, got each other’s contact information, and two years of hard work later, had a published report!  Collaborating across the United States, much less across an ocean, is respectable.  Collaboration is important in the cultural heritage field to ensure the fostering of new ideas and the advancement of the profession.

References:

AIMS Work Group (2013).  AIMS Born-Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship. Retrieved from http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/aims/whitepaper/AIMS_final.pdf

Redwine, G., Barnard, M., Donovan, K., Farr, E., Forstrom, M., Hansen, W., . . . Thomas, S. (2013, October). Born Digital: Guidance for Donors, Dealers, and Archival Repositories.  Council on Library and Information Resources.  Retrieved from http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub159

The University of North Texas Library (2016, 16 February).  Born Digital: Guidance for Donors, Dealers, and Archival Repositories.  Retrieved from http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc234935/