Beyond Floppy Disks: Collecting Digital Content for Archives Today (original) (raw)

For the past decade, archives have focused on developing the internal capacity to store and manage digital records. Many methodologies exist for describing, managing, storing, and providing access to digital content in archives today.1 With tools such as BitCurator, we also have methods to extract and analyze digital content from external storage devices acquired with archival collections such as floppy disks and hard drives. Building from these advances, and working with the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Library,2 AVPreserve saw the need for a tool that could engage records creators in the activity of preparing and sending digital content directly to an archives. Together we turned our attention to addressing digital collections made available by donors and records creators by creating a tool called “Exactly.”