Furthermore, as physical holdings can only be accessed by one person at a time in the Archives reading room, digitization makes these collections available to people around the world. Paper and photographic material degrades over time, and frequent handling speeds up this process. Careful handling and storage conditions are essential to the longevity of those materials. Some of our most valued, permanent collections are also the most heavily used by scholars and researchers. The oldest Archives collections date back to the 1820s. Preservation of Analog Collections – Digitization
#Sip definition electronic records professional#
Several professional standards and best practices guide this work. For analog collections that are digitized, the high-quality digital surrogates produced require the same attention as born-digital collections in order to avoid subjecting the analog materials to repeated digitization. Often confused with the broader scope of digital curation, digital preservation is focused on the task of ensuring that digital collections are accessible to the public in the future. Since that time more than 1.5 million digital surrogates of textual, photographic, and video materials have been created and are being made available to researchers and scholars. Annually more than half of our new accessions contain born digital material images, audio, video, text, databases and datasets, CAD (computer aided design) files, websites, email, social media and custom-built software.ĭigitization of our analog holdings began around 2008, and that function quickly became incorporated into our preservation and reference services. The Archives Electronic Records Program was implemented in 2003 to care for the born digital holdings spread across the collections. At the Archives, we manage our born-digital and digitized holdings in the context of a lifecycle management approach. Across the cultural heritage sector, digital curation encompasses the selection, acquisition, preservation, maintenance, and delivery of digital data. The Archives digital curation team provides the necessary care for this growing segment of the Smithsonian’s historical and scientific records.
The use and usefulness of computers has exploded since the 1960s, shifting from highly specialized tools to something that is ubiquitous whether in the workplace, in the field, or at home.
0 kommentar(er)
