First things first…I need some structure!

If I was an archivist working with floppy disks in a professional capacity, I would either already have or would create a practical workflow to follow. In my project, I want to create a simplified, easy to execute digital forensics ingest workflow that considers the specific formats I’m working with, the tools I have available, and bears some resemblance to a pre-existing, more complex workflow.

The term ‘digital forensics’ describes a set of processes that are useful in the handling of almost any kind of digital material. The Digital Preservation Coalition describes digital forensics as:

 

a source of tools and approaches for facilitating digital preservation and curation, specifically for protecting and investigating evidence form the past…Forensic technology makes it possible to: identify privacy issues; establish a chain of custody for provenance; employ write protection for capture and transfer; and detect forgery or manipulation.

 

Essentially, digital forensic technology allows archivists to undertake the kind of tasks and processes associated with ensuring a record’s authenticity that we are already accustomed to doing when working with analog, paper-based records. In order to perform these tasks, we need specialist tools. One such tool is BitCurator.

BitCurator is open source software that has a suite of digital forensics and data analysis tools to help archivists process born-digital materials. Having learned about it in class, it seemed like a useful tool to try and get to grips with, so I decided to build a workflow around processes that BitCurator could execute.

 

Creating a Workflow

My next step was to have a look at pre-existing workflows being used by archive professionals in their digital preservation efforts. I looked at several different workflows on the blogs of digital archivists and practitioners. Whilst these workflows displayed varying levels of detail and complexity, all are created for:

1. The digital preservation of born-digital material from hardware such as CDs, hard drives, and (crucially for my purposes!) floppy disks.
2.  Archivists who want to use BitCurator as part of their preservation efforts.

 

I then formed a mini-workflow that takes into account the resources I have, and what I’m trying to achieve in this project:

 

 

A Wider Context

I also want to be able to place the processes I’m undertaking for this project on The Open Archival Information Systems (OAIS) Reference Model. The OAIS Reference Model is not a workflow exactly, but rather a widely-used conceptual model for a digital archive. It’s also an international standard (ISO 14721), and is freely available here. This is what it looks like:

 

The Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford have a great, very simple overview of the model that is helpful for beginners working with it for the first time. This guide describes the reference model as:

 

[describing] the environment, functional components, and information objects associated with a system responsible for the long-term preservation [of digital material].

 

The guide also provides definitions of the abbreviations used. This helped me to figure out how the digital forensics processes I am using interact with this model. Essentially, I am creating a SIP, or Submission Information Package: that is, the initial information package consisting of a disk image of the digital object, its metadata, and its reports. This positions me right at the start of the model:

 

Now I’m a bit more prepared, all that’s left for me to do is to get stuck in!

 

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