Last UPDATED June 2018
When there are born digital photographs or digital A/V material in a collection, be aware that their treatment needs to be in consult with Joanne Donovan, the Audiovisual/Photograph Archivist. It may be that the digital photos and A/V in a collection have been recognized as such and already in Joanne's possession. It may also be possible that they are stored with other born digital material in files managed by Jen Weintraub. You can determine this during your collection survey, and work with Joanne and Jen to get all files together for pre-processing. Joanne manages the cataloging/DRS deposit for digital photos and A/V, so if you're working with these files along with textual born digital material, know that you will need to transfer them to her separately at the end of processing.
...
During processing, born digital photographs will be appraised in the same way non-digital photographs are appraised. The images will eventually be cataloged in VIA, so processors should include the usual statement regarding cataloging photographs in scope and content note.
Appraisal:
Born digital material provides a number of options for cataloging and description. Joanne will help you to decide what, if any, photographs will be cataloged in Shared Shelf. Born digital photographs may come with metadata that can be repurposed for item-level cataloging. If you have photographs that don't warrant item-level cataloging, but that you would like to include in the collection for documentary reasons, these photographs can be treated like other born digital files, and transformed into PDF/As for delivery to the researcher.
NOTE: Our current practice is to keep a disk image of all digital files included in the collection, so should a future researcher ever want to see the original of a born digital "uncataloged" photo processed in such a way, that will be possible.
EXAMPLE of born digital photographs processed as a PDF/A:
from Judy Chicago Additional Papers (MC 909)
- 61.2. ["Upstarts and Matriarchs: Jewish Women Artists and the Transformation of American Art], Mizel Center for Arts and Culture, Denver, Colorado, January 13, 2005 - March 27, 2005: Holocaust Project related.Scope and Contents: Includes essay by Gail Levin.
- E.14. ["Upstarts and Matriarchs: Jewish Women Artists and the Transformation of American Art, Mizel Center for Arts and Culture, Denver, Colorado], January 13, 2005 - March 27, 2005: images of artwork
Finding aid description:
As with all born digital material, add another extent line for electronic files
...
65.325 megabytes (15 files)
Currently, we consider each photograph that will be cataloged to be its own file, so count each photo and its size for the extent, even if you describe them all in one folder. Updated JUNE 2018
- In file unit descriptions, use “E” as the container followed by a file unit number
...
From Sister Soldier Project Records
Example TK from
EXAMPLE: E.4. Commitment ceremony: vows between Robin Kilson and Richard Burr Tweedy, Jr., ca.2008. Digital Video. 1 minute.
From Robin Kilson Papers
In the added entries include the term "Digital moving image formats" if you have digital video files and the term "Digital audio formats" if you have digital audio files.
Questions on terminology, description, and restriction issues can be worked out with your team lead and Joanne.
...