What resources are we focussing on?: Difference between revisions
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*Define use cases. Define user requirements (as far as they can be anticipated). For example authenticity - will material be available remotely?. | *Define use cases. Define user requirements (as far as they can be anticipated). For example authenticity - will material be available remotely?. | ||
====What is the condition of | ====What is the condition of your digital assets?==== | ||
*Know what you need to know - how much detail? | *Know what you need to know - how much detail? | ||
*Know what you don't need to know. What is enough information? | *Know what you don't need to know. What is enough information? | ||
*Think about complexity/diversity, volume/growth | *Think about complexity/diversity, volume/growth. | ||
*What is the integrity of the content? Is it sanitised? Can you safely ingest it? | *What is the integrity of the content? Is it sanitised? Can you safely ingest it? | ||
* | *Are the assets organised or catalogued in anyway? | ||
*Is there any supporting material that provides wider context? | *Is there any supporting material that provides wider context? | ||
====What are the bit-level problems?==== | ====What are the bit-level problems?==== |
Revision as of 14:55, 8 August 2013
What resources do you have available?
- Money and people/time. Find out whether you can make the case for one or the other more easily.
- Know whether this is entirely new, or an extension of something you are doing already in part or in whole.
- Think about: staffing/skills, technical infrastructure (storage, processing), processes (e.g. cataloguing)
- Distinguish reccurent costs from capital investment costs.
Where does the stuff come from?
- Know your mandate, collecting policy, retention schedule.
- Know your producers and the nature of the relationship. Develop working understandings where possible.
- Understand the amount of influence you have and the guidance and support you can provide to control what you receive.
- Make sure you receive enough contextual information, or can create it during acquistion.
- Define an exit plan where possible.
- Try to plan and project for the types and quantities of content you are likely to receive based on your collections policy.
Have you got a skills gap?
- Map existing roles and responsibilities.
- Identify gaps or unrealistic expectations by consulting staff, community team profiles and job descriptions.
- Decide whether the gaps or bottlenecks can be addressed by training for existing people or hiring new posts.
- Understand willingness to change - whether you can stop doing things you do now and change job roles.
- Define a skills roadmap showing development over time. Include succession planning.
Have you got the infrastructure you need?
- Accessioning workstation - capacity to process various media types.
- Ingest - tools for characterisation, fixity, etc.
- Store - capacity, understanding growth, redundancy/backups.
- Access - user requirements, interfaces for discovery/rendering, accessibility.
- Consult with other stakeholding departments to determine who has responsibility for supporting infrastructure.
- Are there existing resources within the wider organisation that could provide infrastructure.
- Prioritise your implementation with a clear roadmap. Don't try to do everything at once!
What are the legal constraints on your digital assets?
- Determine IPR, data protection and potential liability issues. Are they known or do they need to be reviewed?
- Ensure that depositor conditions are clear (closure periods or embargos, reproduction rights, etc.)
- Define use cases. Define user requirements (as far as they can be anticipated). For example authenticity - will material be available remotely?.
What is the condition of your digital assets?
- Know what you need to know - how much detail?
- Know what you don't need to know. What is enough information?
- Think about complexity/diversity, volume/growth.
- What is the integrity of the content? Is it sanitised? Can you safely ingest it?
- Are the assets organised or catalogued in anyway?
- Is there any supporting material that provides wider context?
What are the bit-level problems?
- Save the bits!
- Find fragile media. Legacy devices, or short-lifecycle (e.g. floppy disk, CDs/DVDs, flash drives)
- If you have large files, understand if they have to be moved around, this can be problematic.
- Derive fixity information and check it regularly.
What are the content-level problems?
- Identify the variety of formats, and number of files in each format
- use format identification tools
- Determine the problems that these formats cause:
- decide the level of QA you can realistically achieve
- pro-active (checking all files and formats)
- approaches: consult the community format registries, open every file, find software packages
- pro-active (checking all files and formats)
- reactive (provide files as-is and wait for problems to be reported)
- Decide what degree of stabilisation of assets is required via migration/emulation etc.
- What metadata (descriptive and preservation) do you have? Do you need to create any more?
- Identify your needs for documentation,and the needs of your depositors and users.