This post is contributed by Patrick Galligan, Digital Archivist at the Rockefeller Archive Center. Photo by Jonathan Miller, Jon W. Miller Photography.
The Rockefeller Archive Center, an independent operating foundation that preserves and makes available for research the archival collections of members of the Rockefeller family and various philanthropic and service organizations, is implementing a plan to process several thousand digital media items and make them available to researchers. In the past, processing of digital materials was done by a single digital archivist outside of our larger processing team, but now, we provide all processing archivists with the tools, workflows, and competencies needed to process digital materials.
A core group of processing archivists is being trained on inventorying, digital forensics, and other born digital workflows as well as the basic principles and techniques of digital preservation. Documentation for tools and processes is being developed collaboratively. Our current digital processing efforts prioritize minimal processing in the interest of preservation and access to at-risk digital storage media.
Ultimately, the Rockefeller Archive Center is working towards the goal of making all archival digital media from our collections open and available for research.
Assistant archivists Katherine Martin (left) and Amy Berish, pictured below, are members of the processing team.
