You are Here: Defining our Hidden Born-Digital Backlog

The digital archivist position was created at the University of Kentucky two years ago to help create and refine workflows and process born-digital collections in our manuscripts and university archives collections. While much of the initial work of these last two years was on newly acquired collections and materials, in the decades prior, a variety of born-digital materials on physical media had been gathered in hybrid collections and stored and described in myriad ways. This presentation will demonstrate my processes for discovering and assessing unmigrated born-digital materials on physical media hidden throughout our collection. The process is built on documentation adapted from archivists at the University of Glasgow that incorporates the Digital Preservation Coalition’s Bit List as a means of prioritizing born-digital migration from most to least endangered. The goal of these processes is to clarify the need for this repository-wide evaluation and subsequent reappraisal and migration, calculate the quantity and status of born-digital materials, and identify vulnerable digital objects that were previously unknown to current staff members. In addition to providing my own practical takeaways, including template and keywords for queries, I hope to learn how other institutions and entities have approached this challenge and what they have learned in the process.