Issue no.4

During the course of electronic records start-up project for a medium-sized art museum located in the Northeast United States, the need to develop strategies for digitally archiving two-dimensional CAD drawings (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) models became readily apparent. Over 37,000 CAD drawings were unearthed during a network storage inventory project, as well as over 6,000 3D models. These files originate primarily in VectorWorks (and its predecessor MiniCAD), AutoCAD, and Rhinoceros. Given this need, this project is motivated by the question: By what methods can two-dimensional CAD drawings (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) models be digitally archived for long term preservation and access? To answer this question, a review of the relevant literature will be conducted, followed by an investigation of solutions available to this medium-sized museum, and conclude with format migration tests of select records.

ANZAC Connections is the Australian War Memorial’s major digitisation and web development project to mark the centenary of the First World War. This paper discusses the challenges and solutions met by the Memorial for digitising, managing, preserving and providing public access to archival collections via a museum collection database. It focuses on accommodating archival records and associated images in the Memorial’s collection database and the resulting improvements to online display of these collections. Finally, attention is given to the development of descriptive standards for digitised archival collections and biographies of their creators.

The University of Maryland Libraries face a number of challenges in accepting born digital content. Working together, Graduate Assistants from Digital Systems and Stewardship (DSS) and Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) developed a process for working with born digital material that integrates new tools adopted by the Libraries, while assessing the effectiveness of other software and hardware options. This report reflects this experimentation and consultation of extant literature on born digital processing, and includes a guide to working with the Libraries’ Forensic Recovery of Evidence Device (FRED). Our paper lays out the workflow, explains key decisions, and describes challenges.