Year in Review of Digital Archivy Projects

Posted by davidkaymls on Jan 5, 2024 in Blog, Featured, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Year in Review of Digital Archivy Projects

Our year in review of Digital Archivy reveal one unsurprising conclusion. In an era of Big Data, digital archiving and preservation provide the most effective and efficient ways to manage, leverage and use historic materials and information. Last year, Digital Archivy worked closely with some impressive organizations. We helped create archival projects that were tailored to serve their specific needs, goals, requirements, timelines, and budget.

As you can see from the list below, the projects all raise awareness, improve control and add value. We help organizations develop digital preservation strategies, digitize and license raw footage, compare and rate different Digital Asset Management (DAM) options, and build trusted digital library prototypes that provide access to hidden historic materials.

“Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage” (HBO)

Recent Digital Archivy Projects

We met and faced new challenges and learned a lot over the past year.  It was intimidating and fun! Fortunately, our clients were willing to hear out and test out different options and find solutions that were the most effective and useful. Our new client projects included everything from film production studios, magazine publisher, and a few non-profit organizations, foundations and charities.

• Assisted a children’s rights organization in updating digital preservation and access strategy, implementation road map, timeline and budget
• Digitized and licensed Super 8 film and digitized and transcribed on-site audio recordings for
  • Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 (Raw TV/Netflix),
  • Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage (HBO Max), and
  • BURN IT DOWN! (Dorothy Street Pictures and Rolling Stone)
• Developed a DAM Scorecard to assist a non-profit foundation compare and select a DAM
• Launched Digital Library Archive of 30+ years of a groundbreaking lesbian magazine.

As a result, we learned that projects may differ in time, budget and complexity, but Digital Archivy is effective by working closely with clients. We work best when we help people who have a vision, an awareness and sense of pride in their history and collections. Our clients want to share with others and support their stakeholders. We help them do that and make their information more valuable and less vulnerable. No job is too small or big!

Potential Digital Archivy Projects

So the question is: what’s next? Are there any projects that you are facing that seem impossible and could use some support?

For example, do you have

• a collection of Family Photo Albums or Scrapbooks gathering dust?  – These could be digitized and made accessible everywhere online!
• a list of awards and honors that your institution has received?             – These could be analyzed to find insights on trends and patterns!
• different types of media content and formats on related subjects?     – These could be preserved and made accessible via online platform!
• an Excel spreadsheet with a lot of data but is incomprehensible?       –  Data analytics and pivot tables can reveal new and useful insights!

“Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99” (RawTV/NetFlix)

Check out our proof-of-concept Digital Archive Library prototype for Talker of the Town. If you’d like to learn more, please contact us directly.

Quarantined Archiving – “Time flies like an arrow”

Posted by davidkaymls on May 26, 2021 in Blog | Comments Off on Quarantined Archiving – “Time flies like an arrow”

“Time flies like an arrow,
fruit flies like a banana.” —Groucho Marx

Quarantined Archiving

The other day, I was thinking about quarantined archiving. While quarantined, time flew like a uni-directional arrow. Many individuals faced challenges as they learned to work from home. They created content, workflows and information ecosystems that worked for them. But if they named files inconsistently or stored assets haphazardly, no one ever noticed.

As employees return to the office, they realize what they need to do. They must identify and transfer the files they created to their shared network, and let their supervisor know. If they keep the files on their local system, their employer will lose a chunk of its history.

Two Strategies for Digital Access and Quarantined Archiving

There are two different strategies for this. Obviously, the institutional requirements and habits of the individual affect one another. If, for example, the individual is well-organized and keeps files in chronological order and named consistently, then it should be relatively easy. Simply locate the folder with the files and rename it and transfer the folder to the Intranet.

While this might seem simple and intuitive, it’s actually a bad answer! When an individual transfers a folder, then all content is transferred, good and bad, fresh, raw and rotted. This strategy would attract fruit flies to the rotten bananas. Ultimately, this strategy is more time-consuming and negatively affects usability.  It also complicates search, hinders retrieval times, and adds complexity and cost. But by mixing “final approved” files with drafts and old versions, users are more likely to find and distribute the wrong version.

Quarantined Archiving Second Strategy – Develop a Core Collection

The second strategy is much more effective and efficient. It is standards-based, task-oriented, and user-focused. By using this strategy, the user (creator) develops items for a Core Collection. With an eye towards migrating to a central repository, the inventory will list all projects, dates and deliverables. This will serve as a structure to identify the size, scope and complexity.

The files, their storage locations, and other important requirements will be transferred with the files themselves. This user-focused strategy builds trust. The inventory can be used to document transfer of custody and help identify gaps in documentation.

Back to the Future Office

When employees return to the office, they will need a reliable and systematic way to transfer files they’ve created. This is critical.  It is impossibly hard to decide, in the moment or many months later, what has or will have historic value. The transition of content from operational usage to routine deliverables to one of great historic value is subjective and changes over time.

In contrast, most project management software focuses on a near-term foundation and clearly-defined deliverables. It requires a project title, a list of contributors, and a target date, destination, and deadline.  These are the primary components needed to manage a collection of assets and deliverables. Each contributor’s work is clear on a schedule, and each contributor completes his/her work on schedule, and then hands it off to the next.

These sequential workflows are effective until a problem arises. For example, if the first contributor is out, then the rest of the schedule could be affected.  Good archiving practices focus on the content or the assets. Best practice, built on archival standards, should be implemented early. It builds trust and responsiveness. In other words, a seamless and efficient transfer of assets to a centralized repository is a critical step.

Conclusion

Quarantined archiving provides first-hand evidence of the critical need for archiving.  Successful creators or collectors of content are proactive. They help transfer, share and centralize the content and notify the appropriate people. Yes, time flies when you’re in quarantined archiving, but you still have to protect your bananas.

If you need assistance or guidance in thinking about this or other archiving challenges, feel free to contact Digital Archivy directly.

Use Cases Build Better Responsiveness

Posted by davidkaymls on Apr 28, 2021 in Blog | Comments Off on Use Cases Build Better Responsiveness

Effective, practical and typical use cases build better responsiveness. One of the most critical components of a successful system is its responsiveness to users and their needs. In planning projects and in designing use cases, it is essential to work with stakeholders. Ultimately, their insights provide direction needed to develop a variety of typical task-oriented and user-driven scenarios. Good responsiveness requires a clear understanding of how People, Process and Technology work together to build an effective information ecosystem. It’s like the roots of a tree that feed content and nutrients to the leaves on the branches.

Tree with roots for Use Cases

..
There are a number of moving parts in every system, but the most important part is the end users. That is why it is so critical to identify key stakeholders early.  By defining a Designated Community, stakeholders and super-users can give input and help design solutions they need. User feedback combined with background knowledge help determine technical, administrative, legal, and descriptive requirements. Though each designated community is different, most share similar requirements based on content, its value, time limits, and the function of the system itself.

Use Cases Terminology

An effective Use Case demands a Designated Community with Personas, plus an awareness and familiarity with shared content in the Knowledgebase.  These components make it easy to build applicable Use Cases with an understanding of each term.

Designated Community – Designated Communities represent a particular audience imagined by Open Archival Information System (OAIS) standard. It is an audience of stakeholders that produce, consume, and use content that needs to be preserved. The Designated Communities are end users and, as described by the OAIS standard, Consumers.

Personas – A Persona is an archetypical user of a system. In general, personas are fictitious people based on real-life users. Effective and well-defined User Personas require familiarity with the user, needs, workflows, frustrations and pain points, and the types of content.  

Knowledgebase – The Knowledgebase contains all the content, including all formats. Whether it’s a shared drive or a DAM, an audit of content will require data on date ranges, directory names and file sizes, file formats, and more. This creates awareness of the content and makes it easier to establish a holistic strategy to connect users to resources.

Effective Use Cases

Effective Use Cases are targeted directly to the Designated Community. These solutions focus on specific needs and perspectives of Personas. With this understanding and a familiarity with the collection, it is easier to create more relevant use cases. The best designed use cases are built with an understanding and empathy for the personas and users.

Depending on the needs of the institution, use cases should address practical, tactical, typical and critical needs. The most successful ones address the needs of users. More importantly, though, solutions can be scaled to address new or changing requirements.  Effective Use Cases ensure the system is responsive to its users. This builds long-term solutions that are familiar, easy to understand, and user-focused.

For more info about the OAIS standard, check out the tutorial and training resources at CESSDA.EU

If you have any questions or need suggestions, contact us!