Doing digital - putting theory in to practice (part two)

Beth Astridge (Project Archivist, UKPA) and Clair Waller (Digital Archivist), University of Kent Special Collections and Archives.

This is the second in a series of blog posts from the University of Kent Special Collections & Archives describing some of our ongoing work to implement robust workflow and processes for the acquisition and management of born digital records, driven by our work to establish the UK Philanthropy Archive. 

In this blog we discuss how we developed guidelines for the cataloguing of born-digital materials, we share our thinking relating to how we will manage material containing personal data, and we consider how best we can make digital collections accessible for our users.  

Collections Management – Cataloguing, Access and Discovery 

In Special Collections & Archives, our long-term goal is that we are able to showcase our rich and diverse digital collections to a world-wide audience, securely and intuitively, engaging people with our archives, telling the story of the University of Kent, and developing our reputation as a trusted repository for digital content.  

To achieve this vision, we need to address how we approach cataloguing digital material and consider the various factors relating to how to make these collections accessible.  

Born digital cataloguing 

As we began to receive more offers of born-digital material for the UK Philanthropy Archive (UKPA) it became clear that we needed to develop some tailor-made guidance for cataloguing born-digital collections. We have accepted and catalogued this sort of material before, but this work had been completed “on the fly" as such, and hadn’t been considered in detail.   

We began by looking at the guidance that was available already from organisations such as TNA and the DPC. We then got together and discussed how what we had read could be applied at Kent, and started drafting a paper detailing our thoughts, using the TNA position paper on cataloguing born-digital records as a basis for our thinking. The paper explored why we thought born-digital records needed a specific approach, before going on to explain how we proposed to tackle cataloguing this sort of material within each of the relevant ISAD(G) elements.  

Once we had written and shared our paper, and ensured that the team were on board, we went on to create some guidelines for cataloguing staff that went through each ISAD(G) element in turn. These guidelines are now in place and set out the approach that all staff follow when cataloguing born digital records. As this is a new set of guidelines at Kent – we encourage any staff beginning to catalogue using the guidelines to let us know how they get on, and whether the guidelines offer enough clarity on how to approach born-digital records.  

Dealing with confidential, sensitive or personal data  

The records we encounter in the archives of philanthropists, trusts and foundations as part of the UKPA often include information of a confidential, sensitive or personal nature.  For example, governance records such as minutes of trustee meetings and related papers and correspondence; and often large series of grants files - usually varied in nature and containing correspondence about potential projects, application forms or summaries of organisations and activities, and financial information. The wide variety of information in these files, and the level of detail discussed and recorded in these contexts make it challenging when considering issues of confidentiality, sensitivity and personal data.  

Alongside the need to ensure compliance with legislation and ethical guidelines in relation to this data, we also want to aim for as much access as possible. We therefore consider a range of approaches including general collection or series closure periods, select closure periods with decision making at file level, and redaction – where the redacting takes place at the point of access (if this is feasible given the size and content of the record requested). 

Some of these options will take additional staff resource to achieve – but as our vision for the archives is centred on access and responsible digital curation we are aiming to try this approach where possible, monitoring how sustainable it is if demand were to increase.  

Making digital collections accessible

The nature of born-digital material sets it apart from physical archives, in that it is possible to enable access to readers around the world at the click of a button in its intended form, allowing multiple users to discover, access and use both digital and digitised items from our collections. 

We currently make our collections available through our online catalogues (using Axiell’s CalmView and SirsiDynix’s Enterprise). However, in most cases only the metadata is made available in this way. We do have some images available in Calmview, but the way in which these images are presented is not optimal, as the images are generally of a low resolution and there is no functionality in terms of rights management and download options.  

As our archives continue to grow and we start to see more born-digital material deposited, particularly in respect of the University Archive and the UK Philanthropy Archive, we expect to see more challenges in how we make digital material accessible in a meaningful way. We are just about to embark on a project that will review our online digital services. We hope that this will help us identify the gaps in our service and recommend ways to address these going forwards. This may mean adapting our current systems or exploring new or additional ones. We’d also like to be able to curate and creatively exhibit our digital collections to engage researchers, students and society, whilst also demonstrating our expertise in digitisation. 

If you have any recommendations in relation to this, or are embarking on similar projects, we’d love to hear from you!