Do you have a roadmap of your digital content to preserve?
- Nancy McGovern (Unlicensed)
Overview: The digital content review (DCR) is a lifecycle-based process to enable a repository’s digital preservation planning. Creating then maintaining current, comprehensive, and cumulative information about the digital content that an organization needs or wants to preserve is invaluable. The time and effort required to conduct a DCR and maintain the results is repaid over time through the benefits afforded by using and enhancing the accumulated results. To complete a DCR, the lead(s) for digital preservation establish a project and/or convene a group to gather information using a structured process. The results of ongoing digital content reviews produce a DCR dataset that enables near-term and long-term preservation planning.
A DCR uses lifecycle characteristics (e.g., use a common workflow to receive content from producers, are processed by a common unit or using a common workflow once received, are discovered or made available in a common way) rather than subject-based categories and descriptive metadata used for other functions for digital collections.
Each review document the current state and needs of your digital content using these components
Individual digital content overviews: a brief document that defines the scope of each digital content type and its relevant categories within; and provides a diagram depicting the categories within each content type indicating relationships between categories, relative (not absolute) size of categories within the content type including current content that has been acquired or is coming in (circles or “buckets”), anticipated (triangles), or monitored (squares) that is not in scope for preservation by the repository, but may be relied upon.
Individual digital content reports: produces one (or more) concise report per content type, depending on the results of the overview, using the DCR template that highlights areas that require attention and reflect preservation priorities.
Landscape view(s) of digital content: provides a single-page view of the whole of known or documented digital content (example) with a “window” for each digital content type in relation to the other digital content types using common conventions.
Digital Content Review Dataset: accumulated information gathered to complete and update the digital content overviews and the digital content reports that enable ongoing life cycle management of current and anticipated digital content that supports good practice for long-term digital content management.
Cumulatively, the results of digital content reviews help an organization to:
Address content-specific and general requirements
Prioritize digital content management improvements
Plan for growth and change in managing digital content
Track the accumulation of content over time using iterative versions
Support progress reports for meeting objectives
Utilize available and current technologies to build, manage, and provide access to the data
note: content that is not digital and is not a candidate to be digitized are not reflected in digital content overviews; physical or analog content that is replaced by digital formats will be reflected in versions of the digital content overview results when the digital content is acquired
There are important distinctions between inventorying your digital content as part of digital archives work and completing a digital content review for digital preservation purposes including
Your DCR results will highlight digital content that will eventually come to you (and that you should be anticipating!) as well as content that you have - this is essential for DP planning; and
Your DCR compiles essential DP planning metadata and organizes your DP planning dataset into your core digital content types to enable preserving your digital content rather than using subject or other classifications that are essential for access.
Question for your team/organization: How do TDL DP services support developing and maintaining your DCR results? TDL members contact TDL for more information and assistance.
Source: Adapted from Digital Content Review (DCR) developed by the Digital Preservation Management (DPM) Workshop: DP Management Tools. See the DPM Workshop website link for full provenance information about DPM’s DCR process and outcomes. alignment with the DPM’s Five Stages, and related resources.
This is a joint initiative between TDL Digital Preservation Services and the Digital Preservation Management (DPM) Workshop and Global Archivist LLC. Dr. Nance McGovern 2024.