Navigating Unmountable Media with the Digital Forensics XML File System

Some computer storage is non-navigable by current general-purpose computers. This could be because of obsolete interface software, or a more specialized storage system lacking widespread support. These storage systems may contain artifacts of great cultural, historical, or technical significance, but implementing compatible interfaces that are fully navigable may be beyond available resources. We developed the DFXML File System (DFXMLFS) to enable navigation of arbitrary storage systems that fulfill a minimum feature set of the POSIX file system standard. Our approach advocates for a two-step workflow that separates parsing the storage’s file system structures from navigating the storage like a contemporary file system, including file contents. The parse extracts essential file system metadata, serializing to Digital Forensics XML for later consumption as a read-only file system

Toward Environmentally Sustainable Digital Preservation

Digital preservation relies on technological infrastructure (information and communication technology, ICT) that has considerable negative environmental impacts, which in turn threaten the very organizations tasked with preserving digital content. While altering technology use can reduce the impact of digital preservation practices, this alone is not a strategy for sustainable practice. Moving toward environmentally sustainable digital preservation requires critically examining the motivations and assumptions that shape current practice. Building on Goldman's challenge to current practices for digital authenticity and using Ehrenfeld's sustainability framework, we propose explicitly integrating environmental sustainability into digital preservation practice by shifting cultural heritage professionals' paradigm of appraisal, permanence, and availability of digital content. The article is organized in four parts. First, we review the literature for differing uses of the term “sustainability” in the cultural heritage field: financial, staffing, and environmental. Second, we examine the negative environmental effects of ICT throughout the full life cycle of its components to fill a gap in the cultural heritage literature, which primarily focuses on the electricity use of ICT. Next, we offer suggestions for reducing digital preservation's negative environmental impacts through altered technology use as a stopgap measure. Finally, we call for a paradigm shift in digital preservation practice in the areas of appraisal, permanence, and availability. For each area, we propose a model for sustainable practice, providing a framework for sustainable choices moving forward

Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Digital Preservation

The 12th International Conference on Digital Preservation (iPRES) was held on November 2-6, 2015 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA. There were 327 delegates from 22 countries. The program included 12 long papers, 15 short papers, 33 posters, 3 demos, 6 workshops, 3 tutorials and 5 panels, as well as several interactive sessions and a Digital Preservation Showcase

Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Digital Preservation

The 12th International Conference on Digital Preservation (iPRES) was held on November 2-6, 2015 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA. There were 327 delegates from 22 countries. The program included 12 long papers, 15 short papers, 33 posters, 3 demos, 6 workshops, 3 tutorials and 5 panels, as well as several interactive sessions and a Digital Preservation Showcase

Functional Access to Forensic Disk Images in a Web Service

We describe a hybrid approach for access to digital objects contained within forensic disk images extracted from physical media. This approach includes the use of emulation-as-a-service (EaaS) to provide web-accessible virtual environments for materials that may not render or execute accurately on modern hardware and software, and the use of digital forensics software libraries to produce web-accessible file system views to support single-file access and provide visualizations of the file system