gengenbach-forensic-workflows-2012

article by John explores the use of digital forensics tools and technologies for digital
capture and preservation in the British Library. 64
Approaches to Managing and Collecting Born-Digital Literary Materials for
Scholarly Use, a 2009 project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities
(NEH), explored the use of digital forensics techniques in work with the born-digital
collections of authors in several different archives, special collections, and research
centers. 65 In an NEH-sponsored white paper and subsequent article, Kirschenbaum et al.
demonstrate the benefits of preserving original computing environments, using forensic
disk images for preservation, and working with donors to acquire their materials, while
advocating steps to further integrate digital forensics processes into digital preservation
and research into access mechanisms. 66
The work of this NEH grant-funded group directly fed into a second project,
"Computer Forensics and Born-Digital Content in Cultural Heritage Collections," which
produced one of the most comprehensive treatments of the topic to date. 67 The report,
topics covered. The Digital Lives project is not alone in exploring personal information management for
common threads within the digital preservation community. See Neil Beagrie, “Plenty of Room at the
Bottom? Personal Digital Libraries and Collections,” D-Lib Magazine vol. 11, no. 6 (June 2005),
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/june05/beagrie/06beagrie.html (accessed August 2012); Cathy Marshall,
“Rethinking Personal Digital Archiving, Part 1: Four Challenges from the Field,” D-Lib Magazine 14,
no. 3/4 (March/April 2008), http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march08/marshall/03marshall-pt1.html (accessed
August 2012); and Christopher A. Lee and Robert Capra, “And Now the Twain Shall Meet: Exploring
the Connections between PIM and Archives,” in I, Digital: Personal Collections in the Digital Era
Christopher A. Lee, ed., 29-77.
64 Jeremy Leighton John, “Adapting Existing Technologies for Digitally Archiving Personal Lives: Digital
Forensics, Ancestral Computing, and Evolutionary Perspectives and Tools,” Paper presented at the
iPRES 2008: The Fifth International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects, London, UK.
(2008), http://www.bl.uk/ipres2008/presentations_day1/09_John.pdf (accessed August 2012).
65 Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, Erika Farr, Kari M. Kraus, Naomi L. Nelson, Catherine Stollar Peters,
Gabriela Redwine, and Doug Reside, Approaches to Managing and Collecting Born-Digital Literary
Materials for Scholarly Use (College Park, MD: University of Maryland, 2009),
http://mith.umd.edu/wp-content/uploads/whitepaper_HD-50346.Kirschenbaum.WP.pdf (accessed July
2012).
66 Kirschenbaum et al., “Digital Materiality,” 111-112.
67 Kirschenbaum, Redwine, and Ovenden, Digital Forensics and Born-Digital Content in Cultural Heritage
Collections.
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