L-110. Integrating Born-Digital Materials: Archival Standards & Approaches - Advance Reading List

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  • Required Readings

    Students should read these materials in advance of the course and come to New Haven with outstanding questions, if any, about these readings. These readings provide key overviews to various facets of archival practice and born-digital materials that will inform our work during the week of the course. Some of them present a broader perspective than what the course will cover.

    Descriptive Standards

    Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS), Second Edition. Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2013 (revised March 2015). Available in both web and PDF versions. We will be working extensively during the course with this descriptive content standard for archivists in the United States, which is based on the General International Standard Archival Description (ISAD(G)). Before coming to the course in New Haven, please read the following sections: “Preface” (pp. vii–xii); “Statement of Principles” (pp. xv–xix); “Overview of Archival Description” (pp. xxi–xxiv); “Introduction to Describing Archival Materials” (pp. 3–5); and “Chapter 1. Levels of Description” (pp. 7–11).

    Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Manuscripts). Chicago: Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries, 2016. This new standard for describing single, unpublished, modern manuscripts serves as an interesting companion standard for DACS and is useful as an example of one tool that can be leveraged by archivists describing born-digital records. Before coming to the course in New Haven, please read the following sections of DCRM(MSS): “Preface” (pp. 7–8); “Introduction” (pp. 13–27).

    Archival Processes and Born-Digital Materials

    The SAA Trends in Archives Practice modules can be purchased individually or bundled.

    Barnard, Megan and Gabriela Redwine. “Collecting Digital Manuscripts and Archives” (Trends in Archives Practice, Module 15). In Appraisal and Acquisition Strategies, edited by Michael J. Shallcross and Christopher J. Prom, 72–116. Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2016. This module explores the challenges of collecting digital manuscripts and archives and integrating them into existing collection development practices.

    Daines, J. Gordon, III. “Processing Digital Records and Manuscripts” (Trends in Archives Practice, Module 2). In Archival Arrangement and Description, edited by Christopher J. Prom and Thomas J. Frusciano, 90–143. Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2013. Daines explores the workflows and steps in archival processing practices and discusses how to expand standard practices to accommodate digital records and manuscripts. This class will not discuss the OAIS Reference Model in depth; general familiarity with the framework is fine.

    Dooley, Jackie. The Archival Advantage: Integrating Archival Expertise into Management of Born-digital Library Materials. Dublin, Ohio: OCLC Research, 2015. This essay explores archival expertise in the larger context of managing born-digital materials in a library setting.

    Light, Michelle. “Designing a Born-Digital Archive.” Presentation at Time Will Tell, but Epistemology Won’t: In Memory of Richard Rorty. 14 May 2010. The notes included with the slides for Light’s presentation provide an excellent description and analysis of the University of California at Irvine’s approach to processing and providing access to the born-digital materials in Richard Rorty’s papers.