Curating E-Mails; A life-cycle approach to the management and preservation of e-mail messages

E-mail forms the backbone of communications in many modern institutions and organisations and is a valuable type of organisational, cultural, and historical record. Successful management and preservation of valuable e-mail messages and collections is therefore vital if organisational accountability is to be achieved and historical or cultural memory retained for the future. This requires attention by all stakeholders across the entire life-cycle of the e-mail records. This instalment of the Digital Curation Manual reports on the several issues involved in managing and curating e-mail messages for both current and future use. Although there is no 'one-size-fits-all' solution, this instalment outlines a generic framework for e-mail curation and preservation, provides a summary of current approaches, and addresses the technical, organisational and cultural challenges to successful e-mail management and longer-term curation.

ArchivePress: Diamonds In The Rough

This paper considers the practical issues in capturing and preserving blog posts and comments. It introduces "ArchivePress", a new approach for institutions large or small that wish to archive blog content that leverages the native data structures and formats of blogs and the dynamic capabilities of associated newsfeeds and APIs, to create flexible, manageable, scoped archives of multiple blogs

ArchivePress: A Really Simple Solution to Archiving Blog Content

ArchivePress is a new technical solution for collecting and archiving content from blogs. Current solutions are commonly based on typical web archiving activities, whereby a crawler is configured to harvest a copy of the blog and return the copy to a web archive. This approach is perfectly acceptable if the requirement is that the site is presented as an integral whole. However, ArchivePress is based upon the premise that blogs are a distinct class of web-based resource, in which the post, not the page, is atomic, and certain properties, such as layouts and colours, are demonstrably superfluous for many (if not most) users. As a result, an approach that builds on the functionality provided by web feeds to capture only selected aspects of the blog offers more potential. This is particularly the case when institutions wish to develop collections of aggregated blog content from a range of different sources. The presentation will describe our research to develop such an approach, including work to define the significant properties of blogs, details of the technical development, and pilot collections against which the tool has been tested

Archiving Web Site Resources: A Records Management View

In this paper, we propose the use of records management principles to identify and manage Web site resources with enduring value as records. Current Web archiving activities, collaborative or organisational, whilst extremely valuable in their own right, often do not and cannot incorporate requirements for proper records management. Material collected under such initiatives therefore may not be reliable or authentic from a legal or archival perspective, with insufficient metadata collected about the object during its active life, and valuable materials destroyed whilst ephemeral items are maintained. Education, training, and collaboration between stakeholders are integral to avoiding these risks and successfully preserving valuable Web-based materials.

Archiving scientific blogs with ArchivePress

A poster describing the ArchivePress blog archiving approach and project, presented at the International Digital Curation Conference, London, December 2009

JISC Programme Synthesis Study: Supporting Digital Preservation & Asset Management in Institutions

In mid-2006, JISC requested that the Digital Curation Centre (DCC), in its capacity as a centre of excellence on digital preservation and digital curation, undertake a small-scale study to synthesise and help disseminate the results of projects funded under the Supporting Digital Preservation and Asset Management in Institutions (DPAM) programme. This report is the final outcome of that exercise.

DCC Workshop Report: E-mail Curation: Practical Approaches for Long-term Preservation and Access, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, April 24 - 25, 2006

A report on the Digital Curation Centre workshop held in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in April 2006 to explore practical approaches for managing, preserving and re-using e-mail records

DCC Digital Curation Manual Instalment: Curating E-Mails

This instalment of the Digital Curation Manual reports on th involved in managing and curating e-mail messages for both current and future use. Although there is no 'one-size-fits-all' solution, this instalment outlines a generic framework for e-mail curation and preservation, provides a summary of current approaches, and addresses the technical, organisational and cultural challenges to successful e-mail management and longer-term curation

Data Without Meaning: Establishing the Significant Properties of Digital Research

It is well recognised that the period of time in which digital research may remain accessible is likely to be short in comparison to the period in which it will continue to hold intellectual value. Although many digital preservation strategies are effective for simple resources, it is not always possible to confirm that all of the significant properties - the characteristics that contribute to the intended meaning - have been maintained when stored in different formats and software environments. The paper outlines methodologies being developed by InterPARES, PLANETS and other projects in the international research community to support the decision-making process and highlights the work of four recent JISC-funded studies to specify the significant properties of vector images, moving images, software and learning objects