gengenbach-forensic-workflows-2012

and archivists ultimately brings digital content across the archival threshold, where it is
identified during the accession process and assigned an identifier associated with the
collection's accession number, which is retained in the archival collection management
system, Archivists' Toolkit. 95 In the case of digital media carriers such as hard drives,
floppy disks, and optical disks—which form the majority of the Beinecke's ingested
digital content at this time—additional metadata is collected about the carrier and
maintained in a separate database before processing of the digital content begins. 96
One important thing that was difficult to convey in this visual workflow is the
Beinecke's active collaboration in recent years with other collections within the Yale
University Libraries system to develop the workflow that is currently used. This is due to
their participation in the recently completed AIMS Born Digital Collections project,
which produced the report, AIMS Born-Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model
for Stewardship. 97 Interview participants representing both the Beinecke and Yale
University Library Manuscripts and Archives noted this collaboration as one of the most
collecting institutions is a theme that has been widely discussed in archival literature. An excellent and
relevant recent example is: AIMS Project Group, “Collection Development,” AIMS Born-Digital
Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship, 4-16. The ways in which to structure donor
agreements to document “curatorial intent,” regarding the level of content representation to be
preserved for future access, are still developing. In addition to the AIMS project, see: Christopher A.
Lee, “Donor Agreements,” in Kirschenbaum, Ovendon, and Redwine, Digital Forensics and Born-
Digital Content in Cultural Heritage Collections, 57; and Nick del Pozo, Andrew Stawowczyk Long
and David Pearson, “'Land of the lost:' a discussion of what can be preserved through digital
preservation,” Library Hi Tech 28 no. 2 (2010): 290-300, doi: 10.1108/07378831011047686 (accessed
June 2012).
95 Acquisition of material may also occur online via file transfer, or via a site visit to the donor's home
computing environment. In those cases, a disk image is created, either of the transferred files on a
separate drive within the processing station, or of the home computing environment where the target
content resides. For more information, see “Archivists' Toolkit,” Appendix D: Digital Preservation
Tools and Technologies.
96 This “preliminary processing” captures technical information about the carrier such as brand, type and
format, serial number, and if there is any exterior labeling on the media, and also tracks the progress of
the media through the process of extracting its digital content.
97 AIMS Project Group, AIMS Born-Digital Collections, v-viii.
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