I’m just back from this year’s Code4Lib conference, held in Washington D.C. As I’ve written here before, it’s an event that is, without fail, productive, provocative and exhausting. Over the years, the things that have stayed with me from the conference have changed (arguably the focus of the conference has changed as well) from technological tools for solving problems to values and frameworks for thinking through problems.

In the last Project Electron update, I discussed the benefits of user interfaces as communication tools during development. This month I want to share more about the archival functions that those user interfaces enable in the application, which has been the focus of our recent development work. Specifically, I will share how the application enables appraisal and accessioning functions, as well as managing structured rights statements.

Over the past year, the RAC has been taking steps towards preserving digital media found within our collections. We have established new policies and moved away from separating digital media from their parent collection upon accessioning due to format. In the near future, we plan to institute a new workflow that involves processing archivists inventorying, imaging, and virus checking these materials during processing and recording their progress using the Digital Media Log. We are currently at the documentation stage of this project where we are working to develop and make available imaging workflows that encourage a comprehensive understanding of the transfer process.

Walk the vaults!

Lastly, one major step this year was the opportunity to re-establish the summer fellowship program between the RAC and the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation in Rochester, NY. This educational program—along with NYU’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation (MIAP) program – can help repositories by providing excellent “future” archivists eager to assist in a “real world” setting.

Audiovisual Access

I am not alone in the belief that access is an intrinsic part of preservation. In the past, the RAC - like many institutions - relied upon the creation of optical media discs (DVD or CD) for on-site researcher access. Beyond the person-hours required to create these discs, there were other issues such as retrieval time; the cumbersome process of loading discs into a player; and monitoring discs for on-going damage and wear and tear. My topmost concern, however, remained the long-term stability of these discs and the increasingly difficult-to-find drives necessary for playback. In short, we needed a new solution to the issue of audiovisual access.