Presentation

Recipes for Digital Preservation Workflows

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Abstract

To conduct digital preservation activities, it is helpful to have a recipe or workflow. One can purchase a ready-to-bake off-the-shelf product, follow an existing recipe step-by-step, or improvise. You will hear from representatives of several institutions who will regale you with the progress they have made in developing/adapting their recipes for digital preservation workflows. University of Kentucky will discuss their efforts to define, streamline, and adapt existing workflows for born-digital materials that are elements of large hybrid collections, demonstrating decision trees and automation tools that have helped them fully bake their workflows. Notre Dame will articulate their efforts to identify tools and develop workflows for born-digital processing/preservation that will work with existing infrastructure. Their work—not yet operationalized—has focused on a number of use cases regarding different media carriers/formats and how to document handoffs, record actions taken, and other activities for multiformat collections that require input from their archival team. Ohio State will describe the evolution of their newest digital preservation repo—Gray—and how they cooked-up a homemade workflow adapting existing open-source and proprietary tools. Finally, Wayne State will discuss the challenges/opportunities of designing a digital preservation program, while navigating many enterprise-level IT transitions to collaborate on sustainable workflows and accounting for born-digital and digitized materials, their description, and appropriate access strategies. While these “recipes” have been developed at medium-to-large academic institutions, we believe they are adaptable to institutions of all sizes and backgrounds.

Keywords: Digital Preservation, Workflows

How to Cite:

Noonan, D. W., LeClere, E., Kauffman, J., Kirycki, S. & McDonnell, A., (2025) “Recipes for Digital Preservation Workflows”, MAC Annual Meeting Presentations 2025(1).