Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Failure As Process: Interrogating Disaster, Loss, And Recovery In Digital Preservation, Carly Dearborn, Sam Meister

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Disaster, loss, and failure preoccupy the minds of many digital preservation professionals and yet, despite the prominence of digital disaster planning guidelines which seem to anticipate failure, there is limited discussion of experience with preservation system or network failures, which are often framed as inevitable in digital preservation. Despite this framing, negative perceptions of failure influence the digital preservation discourse by associating failure with poor planning, unreliability, and untrustworthiness on the part of institutions. This article will interrogate the issue of failure within the digital preservation field and consider the need for more conversations around network failure and recovery. The …

Purdue Data Reuse Checklist: An Archival Approach For Data Producers, Carly Dearborn

Libraries Faculty and Staff Creative Materials

The Data Reuse Checklist is intended to help a data producer verify their research data is well-described and read for reuse by a third party. It was developed from the perspective of an archivist working with research data and borrows best practices from archival processing and research.

Archivists at Purdue University Libraries have been working with data curation initiatives since the mid-2000s. Early in the Libraries’ work with managing research data, Dean of Libraries James Mullins saw the value of archivists’ knowledge in areas such as raw “data” collection, sensitive or personal information management, and defining user groups. Mullins brought …

Purdue Data Orientation Checklist: An Archival Approach For Data Users, Carly Dearborn

Libraries Faculty and Staff Creative Materials

The Data Orientation Checklist is intended to help a data user navigate an unfamiliar dataset, research material or digital collection. Whether joining a new research lab or downloading data from a public repository, navigating new data can be confusing and frustrating. This checklist was developed from the perspective of an archivist working with research data and borrows best practices from archival processing and research.

Archivists at Purdue University Libraries have been working with data curation initiatives since the mid-2000s. Early in the Libraries’ work with managing research data, Dean of Libraries James Mullins saw the value of archivists’ knowledge in …

Applying Archival Science To Digital Curation: Advocacy For The Archivist’S Role In Implementing And Managing Trusted Digital Repositories, Sammie L. Morris

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Archivists have led digital preservation efforts for as long as there have been digital records, as a natural extension of archival responsibilities to collect, preserve, and provide ongoing access to unique information of enduring value. Increasingly, librarians and information professionals are also focusing attention and resources on these initiatives. Examples include data curation, establishment of institutional repositories, and providing virtual work spaces for researchers to collaborate and archive their scholarly output.

Information professionals are relying upon standards such as ISO 16363 for certification of trustworthy digital repositories, to facilitate successful digital preservation and access. Unfortunately, archivists are sometimes forgotten in …