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Tag:

digitization

    Preserving Born-Digital Records at the University of Alberta Archives

    by Guest Author November 7, 2024
    written by Guest Author

    Happy World Digital Preservation Day! On the first Thursday of November, the international community of digital archivists, librarians, curators, creators, users, and everyone interested in or responsible for the preservation of digital records celebrates World Digital Preservation Day (#WDPD). The 2024 theme is Preserving Our Digital Content: Celebrating Communities. The WDPD is the initiative of the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC). It allows us to connect with colleagues and like-minded people and “celebrate digital literacy of all types of communities around the world” (DPC).

    Within the U of A Library and Archives community, we would like to celebrate the WDPD by highlighting the completion of a large project aimed at preserving born-digital archival records that were acquired by the University of Alberta Archives (UAA) on legacy electronic media. The  UAA houses over 11 km of textual records and hundreds of thousands of audiovisual items, including film, video, audio, and photographic records. In addition to these analogue records, the UAA is also a home for born-digital records, which are becoming more and more common acquisitions. The content of these records highlights a variety of University of Alberta and affiliated communities: from faculties and departments to student groups to theatre groups to local communities. Currently, the acquisition of born-digital records to archives happens either through online transfers or deposits of records on external digital media like hard drives or USB drives. However, the UAA has been acquiring born-digital records in other forms since the late 1980s. Many of them came on floppy disks, primarily 5.25” and 3.5”.

    Floppy disks / credit: Mohsen Kardar

    From September 2023 to August 2024, the UAA was lucky to have Mohsen Kardar, a U of A School of Library and Information Studies alumnus, working with us as the Digital Preservation Assistant. Mohsen focused most of his time specifically on preserving archival records on floppy disks and, in addition, was involved in other digital initiatives at the Archives. As a result of the project, records from a total of 1,328 floppy disks were preserved, consisting of 788 3.5″ disks and 540 5.25″ disks. The entire process involved over 20 steps, each requiring the use of specialized software and hardware technologies to ensure successful preservation of and access to these records in the future.

    Key tools utilized:

    • KryoFlux: for creating bitstream copies of floppy disks.
    • FRED (Forensic Recovery of Evidence Device): for disk imaging and data transfers.*
    • BitCurator: for disk imaging, mounting, and scanning for personally identifiable information (PII).
    • DROID: for automated identification of file formats.
    • bulk_extractor: for scanning file systems for sensitive data.
    • BagIt and Bagger: for packaging digital objects and metadata.
    • Archivematica: for processing digital objects and metadata from ingest to access in compliance with the ISO-OAIS functional model.
    • Python scripts: for automating tasks such as virus scanning and file transfers, which significantly boosted efficiency.
    • And more!
    Mohsen Kardar

    Mohsen was instrumental in bringing this large project to fruition. Without his diligence, problem-solving skills, and focused attention, we would not have been able to complete a project of this size and complexity. Digital preservation is a collective effort and having Mohsen as part of our digital preservation community was invaluable.

    * Read more about FRED and KryoFlux in this 2023 article: Preserving Memories, One Bit at a Time:the FRED and KryoFlux Story!

    Thank you to the University of Alberta Archives team for authoring this post.

    This content is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Creative Commons licence.

    November 7, 2024 0 comment
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  • Digitization Spotlight: Canadian Corporate Annual Reports

    by Guest Author February 12, 2024
    by Guest Author February 12, 2024

    Written by Michaela Morrow, Digitization Assistant The words “annual business report” likely don’t conjure up the most exciting visions in your head. You most likely think of rows of monetary values, line graphs of stocks, and maybe, if you’re lucky, a photo of a company’s president. However, our library’s unique Canadian Corporate Annual Reports collection shows there is more to annual reports than numbers and suits. These reports offer us a glimpse…

  • Digitization Spotlight: Our Voice

    by Guest Author May 23, 2023
    by Guest Author May 23, 2023

    Written by Logan Thienes, Digitization Assistant and first-year Digital Humanities student The newly-digitized Our Voice collection is a complement to the digital Alberta Street News collection, which was scanned by the U of A Library in 2022 (you can read about that project here!). Both are Edmonton street newspapers, created to serve and be sold by unhoused, disabled, and unemployed people living in Edmonton. Our Voice, originally titled Spare Change from 1994-1996,…

  • Hidden Gems: Edmonton Queer History Collection

    by Emily Zheng March 14, 2023
    by Emily Zheng March 14, 2023

    The University of Alberta Library offers access to numerous resources that are core for certain disciplines, but also really deserving of wider attention. Here is one of those gems… The Edmonton Queer History Collection features 2SLGBTQ+ community magazines, newsletters, and items of historical significance in and around the Edmonton area.  The collection is an ongoing collaboration between the University of Alberta Library’s digitization services, MacEwan University Library, and the Edmonton Queer History…

  • Canadian Copyright Update: Public Domain Frozen for Two Decades

    by Emily Zheng January 4, 2023
    by Emily Zheng January 4, 2023

    Co-written with Joana Mazumder, Digital Initiatives Assistant; and Amanda Wakaruk, Copyright & Scholarly Communications Librarian.  As you may have already read in The Quad, the term length of copyright-protected works in Canada is changing due to the Canada-United States Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), effective December 30, 2022. The federal government’s Budget Implementation Act of 2022 extended the general term of protection from 50 years after the year of death of a work’s creator…

  • Digitizing SEE & VUE (part 3 of 3): Why is this project important?

    by Emily Zheng December 13, 2022
    by Emily Zheng December 13, 2022

    This is a 3-part series on the Digitization of SEE Magazine and VUE Weekly. In the first part, we gave you an overview of the project, and answer the “how.”  In the second part, we outlined a short history of the publications (the “what”).  Now, we’re closing out with the “why”, with a description of research possibilities and personal memories! Research Potential In print format, these magazines can be flimsy, brittle, and…

  • Take a Step Back in Time – Augustana Campus Yearbooks

    by Laurel Warkentin November 17, 2022
    by Laurel Warkentin November 17, 2022

    Have you been wondering where you put that dusty old yearbook from your Camrose Lutheran College/Augustana University days? Look no further! As part of the Digitization Program at the University of Alberta Library, yearbooks from Augustana Campus (formerly Augustana University College, Camrose Lutheran University College, and Camrose Lutheran College) have been digitized and are now available on Internet Archive!  Augustana Campus has its origins in 1910, when Norwegian settlers to the Camrose…

  • Staff Showcase: Digital Initiatives Project Librarian Sarah Severson

    by Hanne Pearce October 20, 2022
    by Hanne Pearce October 20, 2022

    At the University of Alberta Library, there are a great many staff that work either on the front lines or behind the scenes to make our library services happen. In our staff showcase, we hope to bring those staff into the spotlight to share who they are both as professionals and as people who care passionately about information, knowledge and learning. Sarah Severson is a Digital Initiatives Project Librarian so her work…

  • Digitizing SEE & VUE (part 2 of 3): What are Edmonton’s Independent Weeklies?

    by Emily Zheng October 18, 2022
    by Emily Zheng October 18, 2022

    This post was written in collaboration with Abirami Muthukumar, Digitization Assistant, and Sarah Severson, Digital Projects Librarian. This is a 3-part series on the Digitization of SEE Magazine and VUE Weekly. In the first part, we gave you an overview of the project, and answer the “how.”  In this part, we outline a short history of the publications (the “what”).  The third part closes out the series with the “why”! The Papers…

  • Digitization Spotlight: Alberta Street News

    by Emily Zheng March 2, 2022
    by Emily Zheng March 2, 2022

    U of A Library has completed a digitization project, which made the entire run of Alberta Street News‘ archives available to read online.  Known at its 2003 inception as Edmonton Street News, and later renamed Alberta Street News in 2011, the newspaper is sold by vendors on the streets of Edmonton and Calgary. It features writing by folks experiencing homelessness, and gives a voice to these perspectives, especially on topics related to…

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