The No-Nonsense Guide to Born Digital Content

<p class="MsoNormal">This book offers a comprehensive, entry-level guide that
focuses explicitly on how to collect and manage born-digital content for &#145;boots
on the ground&#146; practitioners. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Libraries and archives of all sizes are collecting and
managing an increasing proportion of digital content. Within this body of
digital content is a growing pool of &#145;born-digital&#146; content: content that has
been created and has often existed solely in digital form. Providing continued,
sustainable access to a wide array of born-digital content is a challenge for
libraries and archives, particularly because of the broad and highly technical
skills needed to build and sustain born-digital content management workflows. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>The No-Nonsense Guide
to Born Digital Content</i> provides an entry level how-to guide that aims to
help ease inexperienced students and practitioners into this area. It explains
step by step processes for developing and implementing born-digital content
workflows in library and archive settings of all sizes and includes a range of
case studies collected from small, medium and large institutions
internationally. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Including:</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:18.0pt"><ul>
<li>the wide range of digital storage
media and why this is different to, and similar to, existing content</li>
<li>the various sources of
born-digital content and how they are appraised and considered for collection</li>
<li>retrieving and preparing content
to allow it to be brought into the library or archive</li>
<li>storage systems and applying
archival arrangement philosophies</li>
<li>description, preservation and
access</li>
<li>methods for designing workflows
for born-digital collection processing</li>
<li>strategies and philosophies to
move forward as technologies change.</li>
</ul>
</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This book will be useful reading for LIS and archival
students and professionals who are working with, or plan to work with, born
digital content. It will also be of interest to museum professionals, data
managers, data scientists, and records managers.&#160;</p>

Foreword - Trevor OwensIntroduction What is born-digital content? Why is this important? About the book Additional resources Representing the world of libraries and archives 1. Digital information basics What is digital information? Hexadecimal Digital file types Storage media Command line basics Code repositories Conclusion Further reading 2. Selection Types of born-digital content Format- versus content-driven collecting decisions Mission statements, collecting policies and donor agreements Gift agreements Stanford University’s approach to selection in web archiving Conclusion Further reading 3.Acquisition, accessioning and ingest Principles in acquisition Acquisition of born-digital material on a physical carrier Checksums and checksum algorithms Acquisition of network-born materials Accession Ingest Conclusion Further reading 4.Description General fields and types of information Descriptive standards and element sets General element sets Descriptive systems Use cases Conclusion Further reading 5. Digital preservation storage and strategies A note on acquisition A note on file formats Thinking about storage Certification Digital preservation policy Conclusion Further reading 6. Access Deciding on your access strategy Methods of access Use case Conclusion Further reading 7. Designing and implementing workflows A note on tools Design principles Workflow and policy Examples Case study Conclusion Further reading 8. New and emerging areas in born-digital materials Technology in general Storage Software and apps Cloud technologies Smartphones Digital art and new media Emerging descriptive and access methods Growing your skills Conclusion Further reading Conclusion

<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Heather Ryan,</b> University of Colorado Boulder.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Walker Sampson,</b> University of Colorado Boulder.</p>