BitCurator Users Forum 2018

At the DLF Forum 2017, members of the DLF Born-Digital Access Group held a working lunch and discussed issues related to preparing and providing access to born digital archival materials. Following that meeting, a subset of the group formed to create, as one of its main activities, a document proposing “Levels of Access to Born-Digital Archival Material.” Structured similarly to the NDSA “Levels of Preservation,” the document includes various access-related areas of work (Description, Distribution, Tools, Researcher support, Policy and Documentation, Security, and Accessibility), and proposes a tiered set of recommendations for decision making and actionable progress in each of these areas.

This work is already well underway, and by the time BUF-LA takes place in September, the group will have a complete initial draft of its Levels document. In this proposed Let’s-Do-This-A-Thon session, members of the DLF B-D Access group will share the group’s output to date with BUF-LA attendees. Following a brief presentation on the project’s background, we will break into small groups, with each group focusing on one or two access-related areas. Community feedback will be incorporated into a future iteration of the draft. The session’s goal is to solicit feedback about the project while it’s still in a draft phase; hear feedback from BUF-LA attendees; include more voices from the archival community in the discussion; and clarify and improve the proposed Levels ahead of a wider release to the digital archives community at large. Facilitators will include Shira Peltzman, Brian Dietz, Elvia Arroyo-Ramirez, Kelly Bolding, and Jessica Venlet of the DLF B-D Access group.