Year 2 of the Digital Processing Collaborative (DPC) included demos, discussions, and a fair share of “aha!” (and “huh?”) moments. We focused on clarifying responsibilities around born-digital processing and most importantly identifying what “processing” actually includes. That clarity allowed us to update our Processing Manual which was a big win for the year. But when we asked ourselves how we would actually accomplish those tasks, things began to look a little unclear.

This year built directly on the foundation laid by last year’s group which concentrated on understanding jargon and creating shared resources. The Zotero Library we developed became our launchpad, helping us jump straight into deeper conversations and more complex questions this year.

What We Accomplished

  • Clarified Processing’s responsibilities and updated the Processing Manual. Because our manual is tool-agnostic and flexible, we realized that only a few updates were needed – most notably adding information about scanning for PII and editing our access notes to clarify that researchers will view copies of digital materials rather than originals
  • Examined examples of born-digital collections entering ArchivesSpace through Aurora. We treated these as hypothetical processing projects and asked ourselves: What do we need to do this work as outlined in the processing manual?
  • Used demos to gain a better understanding of the tools we use (Aurora and Archivematica).
  • Discussed preservation storage strategies relating to Archivematica and AWS.
  • Gained a clearer understanding of the recent updates to our digital ingest pipeline.

Capturing Our Questions

Towards the end of the year, we created a “brain-dump” document to make sure our lingering thoughts and questions wouldn’t be lost as this cohort wrapped up and a new group of staff prepares to form the 2026 DPC. While our “brain dump” document included more questions than solutions, it became a key piece of work this year. It was evidence that we now understand enough to ask the right questions and frame them within our goals.

Here are a few of those questions:

  • How do I look at the materials when processing? Where do I go, what do I use to track down the packages?
  • At what point can the files be accessed by the processing archivist and in what format? What effect do changes made during processing have on the identifying information for the files?
  • What’s the digital equivalent of moving “to-be-processed” boxes onsite, and who does this?

One of our biggest realizations was that conversations about digital processing hit a dead end when we talked about access. We began to see that “access for processing” may be different than “access for researchers.” Identifying these questions was a breakthrough. Though it took nearly a year to articulate, we now have a clearer picture of the challenges ahead.

Looking Ahead

As Albert Einstein once said:

“If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about the solution.”

This year was our “55 minutes.” We spent the time identifying and articulating our questions and were able to gain clearer insights into the problems we want to solve. Next year, the DPC will shift gears. With a list of questions in hand, we can move towards more task-based and solution-oriented work, which is a change from the past two years when our focus has been primarily on knowledge sharing and understanding.

The 2025 Digital Processing Collaborative:

Processing: Amy Berish, Mary Ann Quinn, Darren Young

Access: Monica Blank

Collections Management: Meg Snyder

Digital Strategies: Ima Oduok