This table displays general guidance for describing born-digital archival material in ArchivesSpace, either as part of a hybrid collection or in a fully born-digital collection. Examples are illustrations only and are not intended to be comprehensive or to demonstrate every piece of guidance. In the places where guidance differs for fully born-digital vs. hybrid collections, this is noted. The focus of this table is collection-level description, but a few instances of item-level guidance are also included. In many cases, archivists will need to use their professional judgement to determine whether to include a particular piece of information. These guidelines generally do not provide guidance on how to process material; only on how to describe it.
This table includes fields and uses of fields that are not specific to born-digital materials, but the guidance is not intended for fully analog collections. For greater detail on the use of each of these fields, refer to the latest version of Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS).
| ArchivesSpace Element | Requirement | Content Guidelines | Examples |
| Title | Required | For hybrid collections: use a generic term (e.g., papers, records) at the collection level and a more specific term at the series level (e.g., born-digital materials), if warranted. For collections that contain only born-digital materials: use a generic term unless the content warrants a more specific genre, e.g., “email correspondence.” At the item level, use revised titles only where absolutely necessary for researchers. Digital materials often have uninformative file names (e.g., draft.doc) but you should carefully weigh the level of effort needed to correct this. Revised item titles are most likely to be useful in very small collections or with AV that will be requested at the item level. If using revised titles, either include the original title in the title field or in an item level Scope and Content Note. | Abraham Zaleznik papers Harvard University Department of History archived web site Series IV: Born-Digital Materials |
| Dates | Required | Use creation or modified* dates, if known. (And bulk dates, as necessary.) Optionally, add modified dates as a separate date expression if necessary or useful for researchers. (Date Label = Modified). Note that the Modified label does not display in the PUI. To prevent confusion, be sure to make this distinction explicitly clear to the researchers, either by using a date expression or by adding language to the Scope and Contents note. *The modified date of an electronic file is the last date when the file was changed, as opposed to its creation date. Determining the correct dates to use can be tricky. Use your judgement and be transparent with researchers about the decision. | 1995-2012 11 April 1995, modified 20 October 1995 |
| Creator | Required if known | The person, family, or corporate body who created or collected the materials, not the software or hardware used to create them. | Chicago, Judy, 1939- |
| Extent | Required | Linear feet of physical collections, including storage media. Total size of digital content, expressed as kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, or terabytes (spell out the term instead of abbreviating as, e.g., GB). Use kilobytes for amounts less than 1 megabyte, use megabytes for amounts less than 1 gigabyte, etc. Round to two decimal places. Use separate extent statements for physical and digital content. Add file counts in Container Summary and file format types in Physical Description Note (see below). If extent of born-digital material is unknown because, e.g., the media carriers are unprocessed, include a count of media carriers in the Container Summary of the linear feet Extent statement. Note: we would recommend a lowercase styling of the …bytes terms, but this is not consistently available in the ArchivesSpace dropdown. | 27.20 Gigabytes 69.03 Megabytes |
| Extent > Container Summary | Optimum | Number of storage containers (boxes, cartons, unprocessed media carriers) Number of files Use born-digital files as a catch-all term; use digital video files and digital audio files as specific terms if relevant. | 1 box, 20 unprocessed floppy disks 20 born-digital files 10 digital video files |
| Physical Description Note | Optimum | Give a more specific delineation of file formats, file format types, and/or media carriers if necessary. | 91 digitized audio files, 2 digitized video files, and 2,401 born-digital files from 2 hard drives, 21 floppy disks, and 5 optical discs 200 jpegs and 400 tiffs |
| Physical Facet Note | Optimum | Label = Duration Use at the item level to indicate runtime of AV. | 21 minutes, 30 seconds |
| Language | Required | The written/spoken language of the materials, not the computer/encoding language. Included at the collection level and series/item levels, as needed. | Materials entirely in English Most materials are in English; some material in German. |
| Abstract | Value Added | If a hybrid collection has substantial born-digital material, include it in the abstract. | The papers of Harvard Business School professor and clinical psychoanalyst Abraham Zaleznik, 1945-2007 include his teaching, course preparation, case development, research, writings, correspondence, subject files, consulting work, and HBS administrative records. Also included is digital material from floppy disks and audiovisual materials. |
| Arrangement | Optimum | For hybrid collections, describe integration method for born-digital materials. | Digital materials were received separately from paper materials and primarily consist of earlier drafts. Where possible, the archivist has inserted the drafts into the inventory alongside their paper counterparts. Floppy disks were received inside paper folders and are represented in the inventory as items within files. |
| Scope and Content | Required | Include as needed: born-digital genre terms, carrier media formats, and file formats. Include any information about creation practices that is needed to understand the materials. At the item level, consider including original file name if not retained. | Researchers should be aware that most dates of digital files were determined based on the file creation or modification dates (whichever is earlier); however, these dates may not always accurately reflect the actual creation or modification dates. Materials on floppy disks are believed to be earlier drafts of paper materials. |
| Admin/Bio History | Optimum | Describe any unique or unusual contexts of creation. | [The donor] digitized many of the materials in the collection and her digital surrogates are linked to the finding aid. There are times that the digitized files do not exactly match the physical documents. The donor created and saved drafts in Microsoft Word, and saved final versions as PDFs. |
| Subjects | Optimum | Include AAT terms: Born digital or Electronic records and/or Web archives. Include more specific terms if needed | Web archives Born digital Electronic records |
| Related Materials | Value Added | In addition to related materials described in ArchivesSpace, use this field to point to related web archives, e.g., an Archive-It collection page. | |
| Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements | Optimum | Include information about proprietary file formats, hardware/system requirements, software access needs, and any limitations on rendering. Include information about material that is not processed due to technical considerations (degradation, lack of hardware or software). Note impact on delivery, e.g., if the item requires special equipment or software, or if original can’t be viewed but surrogate is available. Use at all affected levels of description. | Obsolete file formats may not open or render properly in standard software. File extensions may not be recognized by modern operating systems. Specialized rendering software will be made available for patron use in the reading room. Special equipment or surrogate required; consult Houghton staff. |
| Conditions Governing Use | Optimum | If there are separate conditions governing the (re)use of born-digital materials, note it here. | This finding aid contains links to digital objects. Online access to these materials and the ability to download them does not necessarily denote permission for re-use. Copyright restrictions may apply; please see reference staff for details. |
| Conditions Governing Access | Required | Describe any special conditions or methods for accessing digital content (downloading, streaming, on-site only, etc.) that are dictated by the content of the materials or by donor agreements. Use at all affected levels of description (collection, series, subseries, object). | Digital use copies of born-digital content can be accessed only onsite in the reading room on a designated Special Collections computer. Researchers are not permitted to copy or download any digital files. An appointment is necessary to access the e-mails in this collection. Please contact the Reference Desk. |
| Appraisal Information | Optimum | Include information about actions taken during appraisal, and methods of appraisal. If most or all of this information is standard across collections, consider linking to an external procedure or policy document instead of including standard information in the Appraisal Information Note. | Disk images were reviewed by the archivist in FTK. Temporary files, deleted files, and software installation files were removed from the collection in accordance with library policy. |
| Processing Information | Optimum | Describe any action taken on born-digital content or its carrier media, with the level of specificity that will be useful to the researcher. This could include: modifying file names or file paths, reformatting, changing or retaining the file structure, method of capture/transfer, creation of checksums, deletion of files or folders, redaction or screening for PII, and virus scanning. If most or all of this information is standard across collections, consider linking to an external procedure or policy document instead of including standard information in the Processing Information Note. If born-digital material in a hybrid collection was processed earlier/later or by a different person than the analog material, include parallel notes for each portion. If there is substantial processing information related specifically to born digital material, consider adding a separate “Processing Information – Digital Processing” note. | Digital content on physical media has been extracted when possible. Files were surveyed, screened for privacy and confidentiality concerns, and transferred to preservation storage. Some files were renamed due to special characters in the original file names. Original file names are included in the description of the item. Some spreadsheet files were corrupted and the plain text was extracted for viewing. Titles for digital scans were created by [collection creator]. Description in brackets was supplied by the archivist. Fourteen duplicate digital files were deleted from the collection during processing. |
| Provenance/Immediate Source of Acquisition | Required | Describe the source and method of acquisition. Include information about transfer method if directly relevant to the source. | Collection was received from the creator on two external hard drives. Collection was received as a digital transfer via DropBox. Website captured with permission from [creator] on January 18, 2018 using the web archiving tool Archive-It. |