In a hybrid collection (containing analog and born-digital material), there are several ways to approach arrangement. Born-digital material may be described as a separate series, meticulously integrated into an arrangement at the file level, or something in between.
A note on terminology: Ideally, archivists should arrange and describe the born-digital materials and not their storage media. Resource limitations may lead a repository to describe the storage media instead, at least until it can be imaged/processed. For clarity, in these guidelines “media carrier” means either an unprocessed media carrier or the files extracted from a media carrier. A “folder” is a descriptive unit; a “file” is a born-digital file, e.g., a PDF.
See also the recommendations for using ArchivesSpace Archival Objects to represent born-digital material.
Options for Arrangement
Presented in increasing order of intensity. They are not mutually exclusive. There may be good reasons to group or integrate some media carriers or files but not others within the same collection.
- A separate series of born-digital materials
- A sub-series or grouping of folders for born-digital content within a hybrid series
- Media carriers integrated at the folder level
- Media carriers that were integrated on arrival, e.g., a floppy disk in a folder of paper materials
- Media carriers intellectually inserted into an arrangement
- Born-digital files integrated at the folder or item level
- Rare, but typical done with a small number of files and/or files that have a strong, clear relationship with analog items (e.g., a 1:1 relationship between born-digital drafts and analog final copies)
Considerations
Presented in no particular order.
- Intellectual order of materials as they arrive: are the media carriers in the folders or separate?
- Staff resources: time, technical capabilities
- If integration would take impractical amounts of time, describe as series
- If technical considerations will delay processing of digital materials, may move forward with analog processing and describe digital materials later as series or sub-series
- User needs: consider how researchers are most likely to search for or request the materials
- Accruals: later accruals may be described as a separate series, which may have the effect of creating a separate series for born-digital content
- Access considerations: if a body of digital files (e.g., email) will need to be accessed as a unit, describe as a unit