Electronic Currents

Horseshoes, Hand Grenades, and Digital Preservation: When Close Is Good Enough

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Abstract

When I became the first digital archivist at Carleton College, there was no digital archives program in place. There were a few digitized collections from the college archives, but no plan for ingest, preservation, or access for digital records existed. This was a perfect opportunity to start a program from scratch, and in 2012, we began work on a conceptual framework for digital preservation. We worked with the assumptions that 1) not all records in archives are of equal value, and 2) the care given to a record should match the value we placed on it during appraisal. After assessing the value of a set of records, taking into account the cost and complexity of their preservation needs, we would place the records into one of three tiers. Tier 1 would be our most important records, Tier 2 records those of medium importance, and Tier 3 records of the least important. We hoped this work would make it easier to allocate our limited resources such as storage space, technical capabilities, staff, and time.

How to Cite:

Wilson, N., (2018) “Horseshoes, Hand Grenades, and Digital Preservation: When Close Is Good Enough”, MAC Newsletter 46(1), 27-29.