Scope: Digital Archivist and Curator

Contact: Emmeline Evans Kaser

Unit: ATS

Date last updated: March 2025

Date of next review:  March 2026

Pre-Accession Appraisal 

Curators should work with donors to understand the content and basic properties of their born-digital material. Ideally, the majority of appraisal will happen before the files are transferred to CUL.

It is helpful to keep in mind that born-digital materials require ongoing maintenance that goes far beyond initial processing, arrangement, and description. Digital preservation includes (but is not limited to) regular authenticity checking, format monitoring and format migration, as well as the maintenance and migration of digital preservation systems. 

Questions for Donors

  • How much digital material is there? Can you provide any information about the volume (MB/GB/TB) and the number of files? 

  • Where are the files currently stored?  

    • If stored on pieces of physical media, such as hard drives, CDs, or floppy disks, what types of media and how many? (e.g. an album of CDs, 2 hard drives, etc.) 

    • If stored in a cloud storage account, which type of account (e.g. Google Drive, Box, etc.)? Can you share a link or otherwise provide access for our digital archivist to download the files directly?

    • If anything is stored on a device, such as a laptop, tablet, or phone, are you able to copy the files to a hard drive (this is preferred) or a cloud storage account?

  • Do you know the approximate dates when the digital files were created?  

    • What kind of device were they created on? (PC/Mac/tablet/phone/digital camera/etc.) 

  • Are there any restrictions on the digital files? 

    • Are you aware of any sensitive information (information that should not be made available to the public for legal/confidentiality reasons, because it contains private cultural knowledge, and/or because it poses a personal or financial risk to an individual like SSNs, credit card numbers, login credentials, bank information, etc.) that could impact our ability to provide access to the files? 

  • Do you know of any unusual formats in the files?

    • If so, can you provide the names of the software or devices that created the files?  

  • For collections that also contain paper/analog materials: do all or part of the digital materials duplicate the paper materials?  

Transferring Digital Files to the Library

Sometimes donors will ask how they should transfer their digital materials to the library. The answer depends on where the files are currently located and what kinds of technology the donor is comfortable with. You can always contact the Digital Archivist, Emmeline Evans Kaser, to talk with a donor directly and coordinate the transfer. 

We always want to receive the original version of a file whenever possible. We do not want donors to reformat files or copy files off of original media (e.g. CDs, floppy disks, etc.), even if they think it would be helpful for us. Receiving original files, even if they are on older media or in older file formats, allows us to preserve important metadata about those materials. 

Preferred transfer methods

As a rule of thumb, we strongly discourage donors from emailing archival materials. This method is never preferred. Copying files to physical media (like a USB hard drive) is generally preferred, except for in some situations as listed below:

  • If the files are on the donor's computer, they should copy them to a USB hard drive and mail or deliver the drive to RMC. We can ship them a hard drive for this if needed.
  • If the files are already saved in a cloud storage account (Box, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.), the donor should share access to the relevant folders with Emmeline Evans Kaser and make sure she has permission to download the materials. They should not delete the files from cloud storage until they've received confirmation that they've been downloaded and saved in RMC.
  • If the files are already on a piece of storage media, like a hard drive, CDs, or floppy disks, it is preferred that they mail or deliver the original media directly to RMC.

As mentioned above, please do not hesitate to reach out to Emmeline to advise on specific transfers. 

Using the Airtable Pre-Accession Form 

Every new accession containing born-digital material must have an accompanying pre-accession form filled out. If the collection is hybrid (a mix of paper and digital), the curator only needs to fill out one form for the whole accession – each form contains fields for describing both analog and digital components.  

If the “Digital material present” field is selected (“Yes”), then the Digital Archivist will automatically receive an email alerting them that a new digital accession has been added. 

If you have any questions about the digital-related fields on the pre-accession form or would like assistance filling it out, please reach out to Emmeline Evans Kaser.